Someone beside the speaker points out a cuckoo’s call, but he can’t hear it. His deafness isn’t just physical — it’s tangled with memory. He recalls a year long ago when he first missed the sound, not because his ears failed, but because a farmhand’s rough “Ho! Ho!” to his sheep filled the air. That man died the following summer, and the speaker remembers the children listening while he, perhaps in denial, said “Nay” to the cuckoo’s presence. Now, when the bird is named, he hears only that shout. The closing lines cut deep: even if his hearing returned, the cuckoo would still be silenced by the voice of his dead. The poem holds a quiet, grieving intimacy, where a seasonal sound becomes a door into loss, and the present is gently, irrevocably drowned by the past.
The Cuckoo — Summary
THAT'S the cuckoo, you say. I cannot hear it. When last I heard it I cannot recall; but I know Too well the year when first I failed to hear it-- It was drowned by my man groaning out to his sheep "Ho! Ho!"
Ten times with an angry voice he shouted "Ho! Ho!" but not in anger, for that was his way. He died that Summer, and that is how I remember The cuckoo calling, the children listening, and me saying, "Nay."
And now, as you said, "There it is," I was hearing Not the cuckoo at all, but my man's "Ho! Ho!" instead. And I think that even if I could lose my deafness The cuckoo's note would be drowned by the voice of my dead.