We had finished the baked camembert

and begun to talk of the future

when we heard a dog fox bark up on the Downs

and went quickly into the garden.

The moon was full, large and low. The imagined,

fabricated constellations glimmered

in the polluted air. The fox was silent

or gone softly over the flints and the chalk

and all we had was the memory

of that wild sound across the long years

of settlement – like the echo of a star.