THE PRICE OF FISH AND THE VALUE OF NOTHING
When I was a boy I was often taken
to the aquarium on the promenade
by the Palace Pier, Brighton – a resort
and commuter town on England’s south east coast.
It was an hour’s train journey from London
on the Pullman Brighton Belle – with its curtains
and its table lamps – restored to pre-war pomp.
My favourite tank was devoted to sea fish
found in the English Channel – teeming still
from wartime’s cessation of fishing.
There were skate and flounder, dogfish and sole,
mullet and turbot, stingray and dab.
The Channel’s bluey grey waters pushed and pulled
the pebbly beach a bucket and spade away.
***
Our coastal waters have become the scoundrels’
last refuge, and the continent of Europe
has been cut off from us by a fog,
a miasma of xenophobia
and racism, hatred and envy,
lying and denial masquerading
as patriotism, truth and fact.
Being here at this moment is like
living among a hidden enemy,
aliens disguised as human beings,
a fifth column of racists and xenophobes,
latter-day Platonists obsessed with
abstractions and capital letters.
***
Piers – their width and length, their cast iron
stanchions and curlicues, the size and range
of their entertainment pavilions, the chance
of swaggering above the briny – were
a hallmark of the best resorts. Brighton
had two – Palace and West, the latter
my favourite as a boy with its small funfair,
green painted wrought iron slot machines,
and glass screens to keep the weather off.
Bankruptcy, neglect, storms, and arson,
over the last fifty years, have left four columns
and the skeletal remains of the tea room.
No one in authority appears
responsible for these vestiges –
which are like some permanent wreckage
of war, a parable of our civic life.
Elise Oliver
January 29, 2021Really enjoyed this poem on so many levels. Your reference to the Brighton Belle triggered childhood memories. As an eight-year-old, I thought it was the ultimate embodiment of sophistication. I also remember my father taking some time to persuade me that the Pavilion was not really the Taj Mahal and that I hadn’t actually been on a tour of the British Empire on the Royal Train. Moreover, I was goggle-eyed at so many pebbles, although they proved to be somewhat uncomfortable on the bum and feet.
As you say, no one in authority will admit responsibility for the rotting wreckage of society and the ‘miasma of xenophobia’ will continue to engender mutual distrust – yesterday it was ownership of the fish, today it’s a vaccine stampede. What will fan the flames tomorrow? The power of collaboration has been truly subverted in the school playground of politics.
Nilanjana Bose
January 30, 2021There’s a pandemic of xenophobia right around the world and it’s more transmissible and lethal than Covid. Enjoyed reading, thank you.
Catherine Reynolds
February 1, 2021We’ve seen an end to the diversity of fish stocks and a political disregard for diversity in civil society. Your poem makes manifest the changes in our society and our built environment. A combination of miasma and neglect. We are richer and yet poorer, more technological and yet less knowing, more populist and less communitarian. All this, as you observe, is ‘a parable of our civic life’.
John Huddart
February 5, 2021That Brighton’s piers should so perfectly sum up our condition – a marvelous conception!
I did not know you were a southern boy!
David Selzer
February 6, 2021For my first five years – and then intermittently until I was ten.
Jeff Teasdale
February 6, 2021Again, David, very evocative of one’s own seaside childhood….. NOT treading on a huge jellyfish at New Brighton (no pier at this Brighton, but an unrivalled view to Liverpool), red mud oozing between toes in Morecambe, both my granddads in their best suits on Blackpool beach, and on finding a huge tooth on the beach in Douglas IoM. From the museum director…”Well, the bad news is that it isn’t a dinosaur as you thought, but a horse, but the good news is that you brought it in here and you won’t ever forget this moment” and 65 years later, I haven’t.
And then the sinister undertones of places and people who have changed us for the worse, and we can’t think of them in the same way again. This part of the poem does shine a beam on that and articulates our unease.
Mary Clark
February 26, 2021What happened to all that civic-minded activity of our youth? We thought we had made headway and even long-lasting programs. Perhaps we wore out under the continuous onslaught of greed and lack of empathy? I remember the bright piers and clean beaches and dreams of adventure in foreign lands. Even then some knew to keep under the radar. Now we all do. (I know, too melancholy!)