Jan Kozák

The story of the king
is the story of a fisherman.
He was a nameless foundling,
a little river-child,
whom once, in a stork’s nest,
the river of time
brought forth.

He was born
perhaps of the Pool herself,
wrapped only in the parchment
of his own skin,
he sailed, cradled
on the breasts of waves
and nourished by their milk.

His little boat
was a wreath woven of straw
and grey feathers,
teased by the wind
and ruffled by the rapids.

From the lap of the foamy nurse
he was torn by the bony thorn
of an old man’s line.
The fisherman’s rod,
braided from the seven colors of the rainbow,
bent into an arc,
a bridge over the underworld river.
On that day, the man
could not call his catch food.
“Who are you, my lord,
and from whence do you come?”
asked the fisherman of him
who dwells on a straw throne.

The Caught One grew from the water
and took over from his captor
the rod, the line, and the thorn.
On the first spring morning,
a bumblebee flew from the old man’s mouth
to seek flowers,
and with it,
his life flew out as well.

The Son stripped him of his skin
and covered his boat with it.
Its keel was a spine
and upon the prow, he set the skull.
He sailed the current, fishing,
and listening
to the river’s speech.

He was a seducer of fish,
an implacable master of nets
and sweet promises,
in which a hook always lurked.

A thousand years passed
like the blink of an eye.
It was dusk,
the river danced
like living crystal,
the ripples were the scales
of a quartz serpent.
Then suddenly the Son of the River saw
in the depths a flash
of a golden coin or hidden treasure.
Again and again he dipped his hand
into the icy tossing of the stream,
but the shimmer nimbly escaped,
as if it were but a ray
of the vanished sun,
reflected as bait
by a nymph with her mirror.

Finally, one hand clapped,
clenched around the fiery fish,
and lifted it from the crown
of a kelp tree.
But then the fish
opened its mouth and spoke:
“Greetings, blue-eyed sailor.
The vortex of your celestial eye
fills me with fear;
it is like a mill that grinds
the golden branches of Life
into the rock salt of Truth.”
The man marveled greatly at this speech.
“Who are you, my lady,
and from whence do you come?”
asked the fisherman of her
who knows the secrets
of horned shells and black pearls.

“I am The Living One,,” said the fish,
“and I come from the Source.”
“I am a fisherman,” the man replied,
“and my livelihood is fish.”
“Spare me,” the fish requested,
“let me be your Living One,
and not your Livelihood.”

The fisherman, just as his father once had,
for once betrayed his name
and let the golden-haired fish live.
As a witness to this deed,
he turned his father’s skull on the prow
crown downward.
He filled it with river water
and placed the fish inside as in a bowl,
so that it might show him the way.

The fish thrived and grew in the fisherman’s care,
until the skull was too small for her.
The fisherman fashioned four wheels
from the wood of a yearning beech,
inscribed them with the words of a song,
attached them to the hull of his boat,
and made of it a wagon.
He filled the wagon with water,
placed the fish inside,
and being himself the draft horse,
he set out on a voyage
across a mosaic of roads.

To all, he was a fool,
he stirred wonder in people,
laughter, and passing scorn.
But the man knew no malice
and walked his path
followed by a ship
whose sides, alone of all ships,
the water washed not from without,
but from within.

Much time flowed in the rivers,
a hundred times in dance
the blue skirt turned—
the iris of the motionless maiden,
the northern star—
when the fate of humanity reached fullness
and the dam at God’s mills
was just about to burst.
Then the fisherman’s
golden fish was so large
that it filled the whole boat
and not a drop of water remained.

Then she said to him:
“My dear, long have you walked
the world as a fool,
yet the day approaches
whose azure radiance
will be seen only by the eye of one
who, like you, has cast aside the net
and accepted my yoke.
The mythical deluge shall come,
a torrent that will sweep away palaces and temples,
reason and diligence,
readiness and failure.”

“Shall I then not be
able to set you free,”
the fisherman asked,
“and survive the flood myself
in my little boat with my pipe and rod?”

“There is no ship,”
said the golden whale,
“that could survive this deluge,
in which the water will be like a wolf’s maw
gaping from horizon to horizon.
Human ships
are like human temples,
mere works of hands and diligence,
that easily succumb to the waters of time.
But there is one vessel,
the ancient Ark,
guardian of Life,
a lighthouse with a golden fire in the heart of the storm.
I am the Ark.
Enter into me,
hide in my womb,
for I am the Living One,
the pearl-bearer,
the motionless pupil,
the eye of the storm.”

And so it happened.
The fish swallowed the fisherman;
he thus took her place,
and she took his.
Inside the fish, the river-child saw
a bed of straw and stork feathers;
he lay upon it,
pulled his knees to his chin,
and put his thumb in his mouth.

He listened to the song of the fish,
quieter than the moment
before a lightning strike,
and so powerful
that the noise of the storm
seemed against it
but the rustle
of water-sprites at the weir.

Then there was only darkness.

ιχθυς