It's Like Having Two Popes Again

Forgive me: I know that this poem by Andrew Motion is supposed to be in Simple Language but that does not make it good does it? I commented on the bit about the 153 fish and how Mr. Motion said is suggested that the author (John in John's Gospel) must have been there to count them. My colleague pointed out that John's Gospel was written around 150 years after the events it described. Unless John was Methuselah, then he wasn't there at all. That does not mean that the figure of 153 is not correct of course.

This poem has made me think about metaphor. Sometime the central metaphor of a poem (if it has a metaphor at all and they usually do even if the poet doesn't know it) can be born of an almost complete overlap between the metaphorical thing being referred to and the poem referring to it. Sometimes there is such a tenuous link that it is almost impossible to get what the poem actually means. This poem seems to have gone one step further and the only link between the poem and the metaphor is the mind of the author when he says what it is about. Well at least it rhymes. Maybe he is saving all the good poems for his books or to sell to some newspapers.