Erica Jong - In The Gla**-Bottomed Boat lyrics

In the gla**-bottomed boat of our lives, we putter along gazing at the other world under the sea- that world of flickering yellow-tailed fish, of deadly moray eels, of sea urchins like black stars that devastate great brains of coral, of fish the color of blue neon, & fish the color of liquid silver made by Indians exterminated centuries ago. We pa**, we pa**, always looking down. The fish do not look up at us, as if they knew somehow their world for the eternal one, ours for the merely time-bound. The engine sputters. Our guide-a sweet black boy with skin the color of molten chocolate- asks us of the price of jeans & karate cla**es in the States. Surfboards too delight him- & skateboards. He wants to sail, sail, sail, not putter through the world. & so do we, so do we, wishing for the freedom of the fish beneath the reef, wishing for the crevices of sunken ship with its rusted eyeholes, its great ribbed hull, its rotted rudder, its bright propeller tarnishing beneath the sea. 'They sunk this ship on purpose,' says our guide- which does not surprise us, knowing how life always imitates even the shabbiest art. Our brains forged in shark & seawreck epics, we fully expect to see a wreck like this one, made on purpose for our eyes. But the fish swim on, intimating d**h, intimating outer space, & even the oceans within the body from which we come. The fish are uninterested in us. What hubris to think a shark concentrates as much on us as we on him! The creatures of the reef spell d**h, spell life, spell eternity, & still we putter on in our leaky little boat, halfway there, halfway there.