With the sunlight spinning through great emptiness

to the mulled puddled blood of ox tongue and calf’s

liver in the butcher’s window, the sawdust

floor and the mothers with children, who would notice

if one child watched another he didn’t know

and of a sudden grasped “He thinks he’s good”? —

each one the centre of a moral world. Would he clutch his mother?

The butcher whacks a lamb leg from its torso

and everywhere is the centre. In a sprightly

universe the stars race away from one another.