Aquatic Nocturne
Aquatic Nocturne - meaning Summary
Submerged Observation in Motion
The poem offers a close, sensory portrait of a nocturnal underwater scene. It catalogs shimmering light, colored creatures and small motions—flounder, minnows, jellyfish, eels, lobsters—rendered in jewel-like detail. The language emphasizes muted sound and liquid distance, culminating in a final image likening submerged noise to a "sunken gong," which reinforces the poem’s calm, otherworldly atmosphere and the separation between viewer and ocean depths.
Read Complete Analysesdeep in liquid turquoise slivers of dilute light quiver in thin streaks of bright tinfoil on mobile jet: pale flounder waver by tilting silver: in the shallows agile minnows flicker gilt: grapeblue mussels dilate lithe and pliant valves: dull lunar globes of blubous jellyfish glow milkgreen: eels twirl in wily spirals on elusive tails: adroir lobsters amble darkly olive on shrewd claws: down where sound comes blunt and wan like the bronze tone of a sunken gong.
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