The Owl
Ted Hughes
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.
