Can you identify this poem about axolotl, fish, salamander

Question

I have some lines from my dad's favourite poem, but they’re jumbled as he was 94. The lines may not be in the correct order. He couldn’t remember the writer, and several internet searches have not helped, except they landed me here. We’d like to find it so we can read it at his remembrance service after covid. Here’s the lines I have:

Today I saw 10,000 fish observing me with solemn eyes. In the aquarium.

And fish that floating on the tide transparent show their whole inside. Not Ray fish these but should you wish they may be termed the X-ray fish

The salamander whose sole desire to be an axolotl fills its bosom with (?)exotic thrills

His life's ambition forced to throttle
It still remains an axolotl

Answer 1

This was already identified by Quassnoi here!

The poem is ‘The Water Zoo’ by “Evoe” (a pseudonym for E. V. Knox), published in Punch, 9th April 1924. The fragments your father remembered were well-recalled! Here’s how they correspond to the original lines:

1. “Today I saw 10,000 fish observing me with solemn eyes. In the aquarium.”

   To-day I have seen all I wish,
   For I have seen four thousand fish,
           Inscrutable and rum,
   Oberving me with solemn eyes
   That hold no anger or surprise,
           In the Aquarium.

2. “And fish that floating on the tide transparent show their whole inside. Not Ray fish these but should you wish they may be termed the X-ray fish”

   And fish that, floating on the tide
   Transparent, show their whole inside:
   Not ray-fish these, but, should you wish,
   They might be termed the X-ray fish;

3. “The salamander whose sole desire to be an axolotl fills its bosom with exotic thrills”

   And salamanders dark and dire,
   And axolotls, whose desire
   To be a salamander fills
   Their bosom with ecstatic thrills;

4. “His life’s ambition forced to throttle It still remains an axolotl”

   His life’s ambition forced to throttle,
   He still remains an axolotl.

The full text of the poem is available via archive.org.