Song on a poem by James Dickey
Excerpts from “The Owl King” from Drowning With Others © 1962 by James Dickey.
Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press.

This piece is all that remains of a lost song cycle written in 1964. It describes the voice of an anxious father, calling and searching for his blind child, who is dancing in circles to the song of the Owl King.
The live recording is the first performance, by William (Bill) Black, accompanied by Frank DiGiacomo, at DiGiacomo in Concert, May 28, 1975 at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York.

 LYRICS
Through the trees with the moon underfoot, more soft than I can, I call.
I hear the king of the owls sing where he moves with my son in the gloom.
My tongue floats off in the darkness.
I feel the deep dead turn my child round toward my calling, through the
trees, with the moon underfoot, in a sound I cannot remember.
It whispers like straw in my ear, and shakes like a stone under water.
My bones stand on tiptoe inside it.
Which part of the sound did I utter?
Is it a song, or is half of it whistling?
What spirit has swallowed my tongue?
Or is it a sound I remember?
And yet it is coming back, having gone, adrift on its spirit, down, over and
under the river, and stood in a ring in a meadow round a child with a bird
gravely dancing.
I hear the king of the owls sing.
I did not awaken that sound, and yet it is coming back, in touching every
tree upon the hill.
The breath falls out of my voice, and yet the singing keeps on.
The owls are dancing, fastened by their toes upon the pines.
Come, son, and find me here, in love with the sound of my voice.
Come calling the same soft song, and touching every tree upon the hill.