Catfish¹
Michael McGriff

The catfish（鲶鱼） have the night,
 but I have patience
 and a bucket of chicken guts².
 I have canned corn and shad blood.
 And I've nothing better to do
 than listen to the water's riffled dark
 spill into the deep eddy³
 where a '39 Ford⁴ coupe
 rests in the muck-bottom.

The dare growing up:
 to swim down with pliers
 for the license⁵ plates,
 corpse bones, a little chrome（铬） . . .
 But even on the clearest days,
 even when the river runs low and clean,
 you can't see it,
 though you can often nearly see
 the movement of hair.

I used to move through my days
 as someone agreeable
 to all the gears
 clicking in the world.
 I was a big clumsy Yes
 tugged around by its collar.
 Yes to the mill, yes to the rain,
 yes to what passed
 for fistfights and sex, yes
 to all the pine boards of thought
 waiting around for the hammer.

The catfish have the night
 and ancient gear oil for blood,
 they have a kind of greased demeanor⁶
 and wet electricity
 that you can never boil out of them.

The catfish have the night,
 but I have the kind of patience
 born of indifference⁷ and hate.

Maybe the river and I share this.

Maybe the obvious moon
 that bobs near the lip of the eddy
 is really a pocket watch
 having finally made its way downstream
 from what must have been
 a serious accident—
 the station wagon⁸ and its family
 busting the guardrail（护栏） ,
 the steering⁹ wheel jumping
 into the man's chest,
 his pocket watch hurtling
 through the windshield
 and into the river.

Wind the hands in one direction
 and see into the exact moment of your death.

Wind them the other way
 and see all the tiny ways
 you've already died—

I'm going to put this in my breast pocket
 just as it is. Metal heart
 that will catch the stray bullet
 in its teeth.

I chum the water, I thread the barb¹⁰.
 I feel something move in the dark.