|
|
| The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder, |
| The wing trails like a banner in defeat, |
| |
| No more to use the sky forever but live with famine |
| And pain a few days: cat nor coyote |
| Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons. |
| |
| He stands under the oak-bush and waits |
| The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom |
| And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it. |
| |
| He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse. |
| The curs of the day come and torment him |
| At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head, |
| |
| The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes. |
| The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those |
| That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant. |
| |
| You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him; |
| Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him; |
| Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him. |
| |
| II |
| |
| I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; |
| but the great redtail |
| Had nothing left but unable misery |
| From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved. |
| |
| We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom, |
| He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death, |
| Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old |
| Implacable arrogance. |
| |
| I gave him the lead gift in the twilight. |
| What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what |
| Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising |
| Before it was quite unsheathed from reality. |
