Pablo Neruda

Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market

Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market - form Summary

An Ode Elevates the Tuna

Framed as an ode, the poem elevates a dead market tuna from common commodity to emblematic, sacred presence. The formal address and sustained praise transform ordinary produce stalls into a stage for the ocean’s abyssal forces, making the fish both relic and ruler. The ode’s celebratory tone and concentrated focus insist on the tuna’s dignity, linking everyday life to vast marine mystery and mortality.

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Among the market greens, a bullet from the ocean depths, a swimming projectile, I saw you, dead. All around you were lettuces, sea foam of the earth, carrots, grapes, but of the ocean truth, of the unknown, of the unfathomable shadow, the depths of the sea, the abyss, only you had survived, a pitch-black, varnished witness to deepest night. Only you, well-aimed dark bullet from the abyss, mangled at one tip, but constantly reborn, at anchor in the current, winged fins windmilling in the swift flight of the marine shadow, a mourning arrow, dart of the sea, olive, oily fish. I saw you dead, a deceased king of my own ocean, green assault, silver submarine fir, seed of seaquakes, now only dead remains, yet in all the market yours was the only purposeful form amid the bewildering rout of nature; amid the fragile greens you were a solitary ship, armed among the vegetables, fin and prow black and oiled, as if you were still the vessel of the wind, the one and only pure ocean machine: unflawed, navigating the waters of death.

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