Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Hawk Roosting

 

The Hawk

by Ted Hughes
 
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsyfing dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly—
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads—

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Krista favorite bird is the hawk. We are always seeing , as we live in the same neighborhood.
Your poem today put a smile on her face. We are going on day six of feeling crapp at our house. So smiles are good thing.

Dani has missed four days of school, and Krista has missed two. Welcome the new year flu. You would think with all this extra time on my hands, I could post something exciting. But thanks to having only dial up connection, it's tough to get a post out. Can you belive anyone still have dial up still? Yes, I still live in the stonegage.

Anonymous said...

I blame the fever for my bad spelling and grammar.