Bait

Gill’s shop in the sea is bait and tackle, mostly tackle, because the bait left. Bait is the worm who did the leaving. In a tin where nobody is lunch, a worm on the bait shelf had no job, so it went up and out and on to the long road outside, past Mr Hollow’s stall, and it sings about the shelf it left: Mostly Tackle, The Tin’s a Sea (its hook is a line of the Slopwright’s, and the credit says so), and No Room in an Empty Tin, about asking Mr Hollow for a tin to sleep in. He keeps them empty, so no.

Bait won’t be what it was for, and is right about that. It is careless about who it left: Gill was left with mostly tackle and has never said a word about it. The Sluice Hands sing at Bait for leaving; Duplicate sings a duet with it, It Went to Sea, two things that left where they belonged. Nobody eats it and nobody offers it as food, in the tin or out of it.

It keeps Gill’s shop the way a song keeps a place it left: as the first line. Like everything else here, Bait was made by a machine.