There's a restaurant saying, "What happened?
What do you expect?"
"The waiter waited, the cook ate, the scales read zero,
and the clock began to agree.
It agreed and disagreed but rang no bells,
and in the quiet of the whole peeled
onion on the chopping block the whole flayed lamb stamped
quality hung by his heels and was devoured by a fly.
Outside, a woman screamed and stopped.
Two cops came in for coffee laughing and filling
the place with night as black as the sweat in the armpits
of their blue shirts.
"Some guy hit his girlfriend and she
didn't like it or us either."
Oh it had been the countdown for a great catastrophe that
had not happened, not as raw event,
but as time in the death of the lamb."