The poem tells a grim story in the voice of a folk tale. A female creature, in heat and distracted, is cornered by a man and his hound and flees up a walnut tree. The man taps the trunk with his axe, listens, and chops it down. The speaker, close to the animal, describes how she feels the blow as if it were her own body, and how she clings harder with every stroke. When the tree falls, the dog and axe are waiting.
The ending turns the violence into music. Her hide stays stuck to the wood, and the door of the shack is strung with five gut strands, so the dead animal seems to have become the banjo of the title. The shack, said to be hers at the start and again at the end, takes on a haunting quality, as if she still owns the place.
The mood is tense, sensual, and mournful. The poem's sympathy lies with the hunted animal, and it suggests that something beautiful can be made from cruelty without erasing it.