After work he feeds the wolves
in Regent’s Park. Keeping his gloves

buttoned, and his fingers clean.
Giraffes with swimming-pool skin

move through the tenements and trees.
One of the wolves has china eyes,

or so it sometimes seems to him.
Keen whites, and blue-glaze irises –

dollybird eyes. He keeps his sleeves
free of her teeth, and watches
until the late spring light is gone.
All of them understand themselves.

There is more time on Sunday,
when he will pay the entrance fee

for the Zoological Gardens
to watch Cuban solenodons
poisoning lizards, or to read
under the green roofs of the reptile house.

Then church. Seven rows in front,
a baby quacks and clucks
in the pale echo-chamber
of morning service.

It stares up at the high windows
where a pigeon is landing,
the grey fingers of its wings

bent back, the innards settling
inside the warmish cage of bones,
the fine sponge of its perfect marrow.

He could explain all that,
would have someone to listen,
if he could. All day is time to kill, and time

to think of love. He eats his tea alone
in Archway, then starts walking

home. Outside the dark shop windows

strings of laburnum flowers
catch the streetlight above him,
and in its lamp, the lightbulb stutters
and stuts like a geiger counter.

He looks up. Past the bulbs and flowers
glitter Sirius and Mars,

thin with smog. He starts to walk again.
He'd go a long way, to see perfect stars.