The Catch

Something has come between us—

It will not sleep.

Every night it rises like a fish

Out of the deep.

It cries with a human voice,

It aches to be fed.

Every night we heave it weeping

Into our bed,

With its heavy head lolled back,

Its limbs hanging down,

Like a mer-creature fetched up

From the weeds of the drowned.

Damp in the tidal dark, it whimpers,

Tossing the cover,

Separating husband from wife,

Lover from lover.

It settles in the interstice,

It spreads out its arms,

While its cool underwater face

Sharpens and warms:

This is the third thing that makes

Father and mother,

The fierce love of our fashioning

That will have no brother.