Alaskan Halibut
Since my last post two months ago, I’ve gone from having my brain slow-roasted over the open flame of university examinations in England to having my flesh consumed by insatiable Taiwanese mosquitoes. Fortunately the abject suffering has come with some perks, such as post-exam barbecues and summer berries in Oxford and abundant spreads of fresh produce in Taiwan. And, of course, the people who make these indulgences meaningful. Though it has left little time and mental capacity for blogging, life has been good.
At the moment, I’m working (slowly, I have to admit) on a longer post about some of my last moments and last eats in England. To tide you over until that much-anticipated day, here is a poem by the eighteenth-century poet William Cowper about a subject that bridges the cultures of the two island nations I’ve recently called home: eating fish. I’ve italicized my favorite part, the pseudo-benediction at the end.
To the Immortal Memory of the Halibut on Which I Dined This Day
Written by William Cowper in 1784
WHERE hast thou floated, in what seas pursued
Thy pastime? when wast thou an egg new-spawn’d,
Lost in th’ immensity of ocean’s waste?
Roar as they might, the overbearing winds
That rock’d the deep, thy cradle, thou wast safe—
And in thy minikin and embryo state,
Attach’d to the firm leaf of some salt weed,
Didst outlive tempests, such as wrung and rack’d
The joints of many a stout and gallant bark,
And whelm’d them in the unexplor’d abyss.
Indebted to no magnet and no chart,
Nor under guidance of the polar fire,
Thou wast a voyager on many coasts,
Grazing at large in meadows submarine,
Where flat Batavia just emerging peeps
Above the brine,—where Caledonia’s rocks
Beat back the surge,—and where Hibernia shoots
Her wondrous causeway far into the main. —
Wherever thou hast fed, thou little thought’st,
And I not more, that I should feed on thee.
Peace therefore, and good health, and much good fish,
To him who sent thee! and success, as oft
As it descends into the billowy gulph,
To the same drag that caught thee!—
Fare thee well! Thy lot thy brethren of the slimy fin
Would envy, could they know that thou wast doom’d
To feed a bard, and to be prais’d in verse.
The Endless Potluck 