HURT HAWKS
By Robinson Jeffers

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 for a few days ; cat nor cyote
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 day come to torment him
At a distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepidiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask for 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 who 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 for 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-downey, soft feminine feathers : but what
Soared: the fierce rush ; the night herrons by the flooded river cried fear at it's rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.