I must  respond to some aspect of today’s prompt so I can say I faithfully discharged my lyrical duty.

Our resource today is Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, where you can find
a smug ceramic pelican, a samurai’s ceremonial suit of armor,
and a photograph of the French impressionist painter Camille Pissarro
dressed as a Venezuelan herdsman.

Must we dwell on French impressionist painters dressed as a Venezuelan herdsmen to get in a poetic mood for this, this PELICAN??  This feathered postmodern freak, this strutting usurper, this oppressor of . . . FISH ?

Stylized fowl, this avian emissary, this BEAST;
does it consume, offer, or regurgitate
the pathetic little fish ?

Hieroglyph of hell—
Perfect poetic cipher:
smug ceramic pelican
(someone else’s words)

Yet, despite well-feathered conceit,
a fragile bird . . .
Easily shattered; nothing to say.
Nothing in its oversized beak
but one small fish.

This clumsy waddler
thinks itself a swan
or an eagle;
thinks it has something to tell us—

But in the end, this waterfowl,
Modernism,
only vomits a sad little fish
named Poetry.