Hawk Roosting

[binidj]

In the spirit of the poetry meme, I offer up my own favourite. It's a tough choice because the late Ted Hughes has long been my favourite poet (he once gave a talk at our school - though I'd been an avid reader of his poetry for years before that) but I think that Hawk Roosting gets pride of place because, of all his poems, it is the one that I think stands out when read aloud. Anyway, here it is:

Hawk Roosting

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying 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.

-- Ted Hughes