"Wolf" by Keki N. Daruwalla is one of many poems that deal with the powerful effect of the natural world upon the imagination. When the speaker of "Wolf" was a boy, his dreams and imagination were haunted by wolves, who were regularly hunted down at night by men.

The speaker, now an adult, can vividly remember hearing the cries of the wolves at night. That the speaker is referring to cries and not howls appears to indicate that such bloodcurdling sounds were the product of pain induced by human hunters. In any case, the piercing cries of the wolf have lived with the speaker ever since.

Now, as the speaker looks back upon his childhood, there are no more wolves around: they have long since been slaughtered by man. And yet, despite this, nature, even in the form of these absent creatures, can still exert a powerful hold on his imagination. In fact, truth be told, the speaker, even now, is still possessed by a sense of awe and wonder at the natural world.

But the speaker is worried that the same will not apply to his daughter, as she's never experienced wolves. Instead, the only thing that can now capture her imagination is the "hedge of smoking gun-barrels" that rings her dreams.