After Les Mis, The Question Is...

When the addlepated inspector falls oaken into the whirlpool
(that never was the Seine)
which strips him of uniform, vibrato, and skin,
did the river leach out that righteous insistence,
calcified in every cell of Javert,
and trundle it under the rocks, lashing calves, cracking thighs,
cracking halves, cracking quarters, cracking eighths
until it was seulement pour les poissons
emotional DDT from humans 
for the fishes, the uncomplicated fishes?