The poem
For Michael Hamburger
Barn owl daughter of snow, subject to the night wind,
yet taking root with her talons in the rotten scab of walls,
beak face with round eyes, heart-rigid mask of feathers a white fire that touches neither time nor space.
Coldly the wind blows against the old homestead, in the yard pale folk, sledges, baggage, lamps covered with snow,
in the pots death, in the pitchers poison, the last will nailed to a post.
The hidden thing under the rocks' claws, the opening into night, the terror of death thrust into flesh like stinging salt.
Let us go down in the language of angels to the broken bricks of Babel.