A fish head is served at midday, and the speaker looks at it closely. The meal is described as "made only of fat," which makes it sound rich, almost excessive, and the phrase "the salt of noon" ties the food to both the sea and the hard, bright light of the middle of the day.
The center of the poem is the eye. The speaker calls it "a fine sight to see at table," a line that sounds polite and a little dry, as if admiring something most people would turn away from. Then the eye becomes "white and still / as an ignorant bed." That comparison is odd and memorable. A bed that is "ignorant" knows nothing, holds no memory of who slept in it, and the cooked eye has the same blank, unknowing look. The mood is calm and quietly unsettling. The speaker seems unbothered, even appreciative, yet the poem leaves us with the strange stillness of something that once saw and now sees nothing.