Feeding Out – Wintering Cattle at Twilight
The wind is inside the hill. The wood is a struggle---like a wood Struggling through a wood. A panic Only just holds off---every gust Breaches the sky-walls and it seems, this time, The whole sea of air will pour through, The thunder will take deep hold, roots Will have to come out, every loose thing Will have to lift and go. And the cows, dark lumps of dusk Stand waiting, like nails in a tin roof. For the crucial moment, taking the strain In their stirring stillness. As if their hooves Held their field in place, held the hill To its trembling shape. Night-thickness Purples in the turmoil, making Everything more alarming. Unidentifiable, tiny Birds go past like elf-bolts. Battling the hay-bales from me, the cows Jostle and crush, like hulls blown from their moorings And piling at the jetty. The wind Has got inside their wintry buffalo skins, Their wild woolly bulk-heads, their fierce, joyful breathings And the reckless strength of their necks. What do they care, their hooves Are knee-deep in porage of earth--- The hay blows luminous tatters from their chewings, A fiery loss, frittering downwind, Snatched away over the near edge Where the world becomes water Thundering like a flood-river at night. They grunt happily, half-dissolved On their steep, hurtling brink, as I flounder back Towards headlights.
Feeding Out – Wintering Cattle at Twilight - meaning Summary
Animal Steadiness in the Storm
The poem presents a farmer feeding cattle during a violent winter storm. The landscape seems close to collapse as wind, darkness, and noise erase stable boundaries, but the cattle remain powerfully absorbed in eating. Their weight and calm resilience make them seem to anchor the hillside, while the speaker struggles to retreat. Hughes contrasts human vulnerability with the animals' physical confidence and instinctive contentment.
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