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