At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.
The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.
The bird’s cry happens at daylight or before – the moment just between night and day, when the old day is about to die and the new day about to be born. It is the cycle of regeneration from night into day, and from winter into spring.
Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself