While the horse dealer
Looks at the teeth of the old horse
He thinks of parched meadows
Turned yellow in death’s wind
His woman neighbor
Rubs her copper buckets with lemon peel and ash
The first gleam of copper shows through
Children play knucklebones in the street
With the whitish sheepbones
Who knows from which herd.
translated by Ruth Christie & Richard McKane
I remember the white bleached knucklebones from dead sheep.
Do you? We didn’t have that. Just stick ball on the street.
I lived on a farm and we had many sheep and ate much in the way of mutton – hence many knucklebones.
That explains it.