Poems, 1957–1967

THE OWL KING

THE OWL KING I THE CALL Through the trees, with the moon underfoot, More soft than I can, I call. I hear the king of the owls sing Where he moves with my son in the gloom. My tongue floats off in the darkness. I feel the deep dead turn My blind child round toward my calling, Through the trees, with the moon underfoot, In a sound I cannot remember. It whispers like straw in my ear, And shakes like a stone under water. My bones stand on tiptoe inside it. Which part of the sound did I utter? Is it song, or is half of it whistling? What spirit has swallowed my tongue? Or is it a sound I remember? And yet it is coming back, Having gone, adrift on its spirit, Down, over and under the river, And stood in a ring in a meadow Round a child with a bird gravely dancing. I hear the king of the owls sing. I did not awaken that sound, And yet it is coming back, In touching every tree upon the hill. The breath falls out of my voice, And yet the singing keeps on. The owls are dancing, fastened by their toes Upon the pines. Come, son, and find me here, In love with the sound of my voice. Come calling the same soft song, And touching every tree upon the hill. 70 II THE OWL KING I swore to myself I would see When all but my seeing had failed. Every light was too feeble to show My world as I knew it must be. At the top of the staring night I sat on the oak in my shape With my claws growing deep into wood And my sight going slowly out Inch by inch, as into a stone, Disclosing the rabbits running Beneath my bent, growing throne, And the foxes lighting their hair, And the serpent taking the shape Of the stream of life as it slept. When I thought of the floating sound In which my wings would outspread, I felt the hooked tufts on my head Enlarge, and dream like a crown, And my voice unplaceable grow Like a feathery sigh; I could not place it myself. For years I humped on the tree Whose leaves held the sun and the moon. At last I opened my eyes In the sun, and saw nothing there. That night I parted my lids Once more, and saw dark burn Greater than sunlight or moonlight, For it burned from deep within me. The still wood glowed like a brain. I prised up my claws, and spread My huge, ashen wings from my body, For I heard what I listened to hear. Someone spoke to me out of the distance In a voice like my own, but softer. I rose like the moon from the branch. Drowning With Others 71 Through trees at his light touch trembling The blind child drifted to meet me, His blue eyes shining like mine. In a ragged clearing he stopped, And I circled, beating above him, Then fell to the ground and hopped Forward, taking his hand in my claw. Every tree's life lived in his fingers. Gravely we trod with each other As beasts at their own wedding, dance. Through the forest, the questioning voice Of his father came to us there, As though the one voice of us both, Its high, frightened sound becoming A perfect, irrelevant music In which we profoundly moved, I in the innermost shining Of my blazing, invented eyes, And he in the total of dark. Each night, now, high on the oak, With his father calling like music, He sits with me here on the bough, His eyes inch by inch going forward Through stone dark, burning and picking The creatures out one by one, Each waiting alive in its own Peculiar light to be found : The mouse in its bundle of terror, The fox in the flame of its hair, And the snake in the form of all life. Each night he returns to his bed, To the voice of his singing father, To dream of the owl king sitting Alone in the crown of my will. In my ruling passion, he rests. All dark shall come to light. 72 Ill THE BLIND CHILD'S STORY I am playing going down In my weight lightly, Down, down the hill. No one...