This is just called Owls.
Wait; the great horned owls
Calling from the woods' edge; listen.
There: the dark male, low
And booming, tremoring the whole valley.
There: the female, resolving, answering
High and clear, restoring silence.
The chilly woods draw in
Their breath, slow, waiting, and now both
Sound out together, close to harmony.
These are the year's worst nights.
Ice glazed on the top boughs,
Old snow deep in the ground,
Snow in the red-tailed hawks'
Nests they take for their own.
Nothing crosses the crusted ground.
No squirrels, no rabbits, the mice gone,
No crow has young yet they can steal.
These nights, the iron air clangs
Like the gates of a cellblock, blank
and black as the inside of your chest.
Now, the great owls take
The air, the males' calls take
Depth on and resonance, they take
A rough nest, take their mate
And, opening out long wings, take
Flight, unguided and apart, to caliper
The blind synapse their voices cross
Over the dead white fields,
The dead black woods, where they take
Soundings on nothing fast, take
Soundings on each other, each alone.
So. I mean I think you can hear that… that call coming in again and again and variations of it. That… I… I was- I… I know that I was imitating Whitman in doing… when I did that. Now and then, he will… he will establish a rhythm quite different from the rhythm that you get in metrical verse or someth… and… and then work variations on that. We… I think we talked about that yesterday… We did…if I… if I'm not mistaken… We did… talked about Out of the Cradle. Yeah. Well, I was sort of trying to imitate what he was doing in Out of the Cradle.