In Egypt they made you a hieroglyph –
no wonder. For you are silent in flight
as night pressing on the Nile;
and when milky feathers part
to show your clandestine mouth,
the small shivering prey
vanishes into you as quickly,
as irrevocably,
as a murdered pharaoh, hustled
by his vizier to oblivion
somewhere in the Valley of the Kings. 

Image: An Owl’s Lunch, attributed to George William Sartorius (1759-1828)