Swordfish Poem

"Swordfish are vigorous, powerful fighters. When hooked or harpooned, they have been known to dive so quickly that they have impaled their swords into the ocean bottom up to their eyes." Encylopaedia Piscia

--(the fish with a hyphen for a nose,
conkfoil, gladius nasus, the xiphos-sniffer,
the piscine Pinocchio; whose every extra nautical mile,
of strenuous swimming is another lie.

In death, like Excalibur, they situate themselves
in the anvil of the submarine earth:
whoso pulleth, and so on, and so forth)--
but when handle's so slippy, who can properly grasp it?