The fierce musical cries of a couple of sparrowhawks hunting <br />on the headland, <br />Hovering and darting, their heads northwestward, <br />Prick like silver arrows shot through a curtain the noise of the <br />ocean <br />Trampling its granite; their red backs gleam <br />Under my window around the stone corners; nothing gracefuller, <br />nothing <br />Nimbler in the wind. Westward the wave-gleaners, <br />The old gray sea-going gulls are gathered together, the northwest <br />wind wakening <br />Their wings to the wild spirals of the wind-dance. <br />Fresh as the air, salt as the foam, play birds in the bright wind, <br />fly falcons <br />Forgetting the oak and the pinewood, come gulls <br />From the Carmel sands and the sands at the river-mouth, from <br />Lobos and out of the limitless <br />Power of the mass of the sea, for a poem <br />Needs multitude, multitudes of thoughts, all fierce, all flesh-eaters, <br />musically clamorous <br />Bright hawks that hover and dart headlong, and ungainly <br />Gray hungers fledged with desire of transgression, salt slimed <br />beaks, from the sharp <br />Rock-shores of the world and the secret waters.<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/birds-48/
