My Poem of the Week: 'The Owl' by Ted Hughes

[narya_flame]

The Owl

I saw my world again through your eyes
As I would see it again through your children's eyes.
Through your eyes it was foreign.
Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens,
A mystery of peculiar lore and doings.
Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes
Emerged at a point of exclamation
As if it had appeared to dinner guests
In the middle of the table.  Common mallards
Were artefacts of some unearthliness,
Their wooings were a hypnagogic film
Unreeled by the river.  Impossible
To comprehend the comfort of their feet
In the freezing water.  You were a camera
Recording reflections you could not fathom.
I made my world perform its utmost for you.
You took it all in with an incredulous joy
Like a mother handed her new baby
By the midwife.  Your frenzy made me giddy, 
It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood
Of fifteen years before.  My masterpiece
Came that black night on the Grantchester Road.
I sucked the throaty thin woe of a rabbit
Out of my wetted knuckle, by a copse
Where a tawny owl was enquiring.
Suddenly it swooped up, splaying its pinions
Into my face, taking me for a post.

(Taken from Birthday Letters, originally published by Faber in 1998.)

Comments

[lilith_lessfair]

Birthday Letters — Caryatids always catches me by surprise.

I like this one too.

Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

[narya_flame]

Oh, that's a stunning one too 😍

I really love this collection. It makes you mentally stop and take a careful look at so many things - startling in the best way.

[mithrial]

Both these nature poems make me think of Gilbert White and his house in Selborne. We visited it last Autumn as it's not too far from here. He was a great naturalist

[narya_flame]

I'm not familiar with Gilbert White; I'll have to look him up!

Back in the days when we could visit places...

*sighs*

[mithrial]

Oh, his house at Selbourne is really well worth a visit, and the garden is amazing. There's a little cafe for lunch or tea, and countryside walks up the big hill.
A wonderful day out in any season.

And the Museum about Captain Oats is so interesting too.