My Human Disguise.
When you look into their eye — shrimp or squid,
Octopus, lobster, bass, flounder or eel,
You’ll find no volition except blind id,
A shiny button or a spokeless wheel.
I wonder if the artist pleased the man
Who paid for this mosaic for his house.
The sea discreetly hides the inhuman
The mosaicist serves up like lobscouse.
His art form one of endless accretion,
And his subjects being quick and many,
Did he work from a diver’s memory,
Or pose his dead models till completion,
Not seeing the fauna’s slow corruption
Preserved by a volcano’s eruption?
