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