Six lines, no capitals, no punctuation, and yet the poem tells a complete story about getting through a day among angry people. It starts mid-thought, "where everybody is snarling I howl", as if someone has asked how the speaker copes and this is the answer. That opening "where" names a climate rather than a place: a world of general hostility. The word "everybody" is comic exaggeration, the way a bad day makes the whole world seem against you.
The title does much of the work. Dogs are, in a sense, tamed wolves, yet here the domesticated animals are the ones baring their teeth, while the wild one declines to snarl. The expected roles are reversed. The speaker answers hostility with a howl, a call that travels outward over distance and isn't aimed at anyone in particular. Then comes the poem's wryest word: the howl is "long and pretty." "Pretty" is a small, almost sheepish adjective, hardly what you'd use for a wolf's cry. Judging by the tone, the speaker knows this song will not stop the snarling, and there may be gentle self-mockery in that, perhaps about the usefulness of making beautiful things in an ugly-tempered world. That is an inference, but the word's mildness invites it.
The sound of the lines supports the meaning. The first line is the longest and the most crowded, with the hard, rasping "snarling" in the middle, so it sounds like the noise it describes. It ends on the open vowel of "howl," and the second line stretches that sound out with its slow, nasal "long and pretty." Then the poem sinks. The "ow" of "howl" returns in "down," and the "o" in "hole" echoes it too, so the howl seems to follow the speaker underground. The line is made of short words, "then go down a hole till dark", and it descends step by step. "Hole" is a deliberately humble word. It suggests a burrowing creature, something smaller than the lone wolf of legend, and the poem declines the heroic version of its own image. Without punctuation, the howl and the retreat run together as one gesture.
The second stanza is shorter and tidier, built as a balanced pair. "Where" appears again, now describing time instead of temper: "the clock is full forward." The heavy f-sounds of "full forward" have a machine-like push, and the phrase suggests a world moving at top speed in a single direction. Against it the speaker sets "my day is quiet and backward." The soft, low sounds of "quiet" are a deliberate contrast, and "backward" is a pleasingly slippery word. It can mean reversed, as in a day lived after "dark," when the world above has gone still. It can also carry the old insult for someone shy, slow or behind the times. The speaker takes that insult and treats it as a place to live. The hole becomes less a hiding place than a pocket where time runs differently.
The structure makes this clear. The first stanza holds the action: snarl, howl, descent. The second holds the reflection. There is no rhyme in the usual sense, only the echoes of "howl," "down" and "hole," and the line lengths shrink from the long first line to short, spare ones, as if the poem is retreating along with its speaker. Nothing closes the last line, so the poem ends on "backward," facing the wrong way, which suits it.
What makes the poem worth reading is how much attitude it fits into so little space. It refuses two easy responses, snarling back and simply disappearing, and invents a third: sing first, then withdraw, and keep your own hours. It also moves the real opponent from the snarling dogs to the clock, from bad temper to the pressure of pace. Nothing in the text says who the dogs are, such as colleagues, classmates or the crowd, so readers can fill the pack with their own. Anyone who has spent a day wanting to be elsewhere, and quietly, will recognise the wolf.