By comparing the fish's skin to wallpaper, the persona inflicts visions of art and decay. Images of peeling wallpaper are instantaneously brought to mind. The fish's faded beauty has been hinted at in the comparison, thereby setting up the detailed imagery that soon follows:.
He was speckled with barnacles,.
fine rosettes of lime,.
and infested.
with tiny white sea-lice,.
and underneath two or three .
rags of green weed hung down. (16-20).
The persona sees the fish as he is; the infestations and faults are not left out of the description. Yet, at the same time, the fisher expresses to the reader what he has sensed about the fish's character.
Bishop's persona notices "shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age- on the fish's skin (14-15). The persona's perception of the fish's beauty is revealed along with recognition of faded beauty, which is best revealed in the description of the .
fish's being speckled with barnacles and spotted with lime. However, the fisher observes these spots and sees them as rosettes "as objects of beauty, not just ugly brown spots. These images contribute to the persona's recognition of beauty having become faded beauty.
The poem next turns to a description of the fish's gills. The imagery in "While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen- (22-23) leads " to the very structure of the creature- that is now dying. The descriptions of the fish's interior beauty ""the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers,"" the colors " of his shiny entrails,"" and his "pink swim-bladder like a big peony- "are reminders of the life that seems about to end (27-28, 31-33).
The composite image of the fish's essential beauty "his being alive "is developed further in the description of the five fishhooks that the captive, living fish carries in his lip:.
Grim, wet, and weapon-like .
Hung five old pieces of fish -line.
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