My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise, <br />a captive as Racine, the man of craft, <br />drawn through his maze of iron composition <br />by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre. <br />When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body <br />caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines, <br />the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . . <br />I have sat and listened to too many <br />words of the collaborating muse, <br />and plotted perhaps too freely with my life, <br />not avoiding injury to others, <br />not avoiding injury to myself-- <br />to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction, <br />an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting <br /> <br />my eyes have seen what my hand did.<br /><br />Robert Lowell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dolphin/
