The fish feel safer when it rains, and don't connect
the murk with their world becoming shallower.
The drifts swallow their best nooks, and even cover
those eyesores Pirellicoatl drops from heaven.

No wonder their fishy wit is subdued: it must fill their stomachs,
a ballast to keep their swim-bladders honest, minds ponderous and hard to turn.
But they are still iridescent, even if this fact should become invisible
when dredgers come to cut a channel, letting loose a stench.

Somewhere upriver, companies manoeuvre their machines
to clear the woods and smooth the way forever.
The soil they expose ups and leaves for a holiday at the coast.
You can move anything by water, even rock, even mountains:

billions of quartzes arrive to tell river-folk it is time to leave.
But their turbid minds turn their eyes from the dust,
and when they drink the masses of minerals they absorb
falsely satisfy their hunger and dull their willingness to move.