Vox Populi
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Robinson Jeffers: Hurt Hawk
I
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 a few days: cat nor coyote
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 the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask 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 that 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 bones too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
We had fed him for six 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-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.
~~~~
Robinson Jeffers (1887 – 1962) was an American poet known for his work about the central California coast. He is considered an icon of the environmental movement. Influential and controversial, Jeffers believed that transcending conflict required human concerns to be de-emphasized in favor of the boundless whole. This led him to oppose U.S. participation in World War II, a stance that was controversial after the U.S. entered the war.
From The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, © 1932.
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I love raptors. This is a glorious poem and deeply sad.
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Yes, spot on. Jeffers writes elegies for nature.
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What a poem! One can learn a lot from reading it and be moved deeply too. Such careful observation, contemplation, and knowledge.
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I agree!
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Strangely, memories of encounters I have with humans, no matter how passionate or emotional at the time, all seem to seep away; lose their importance to me. Nature, wildlife, encounters though, stay with me, growing as cherished memories worthy of an attempted poem: the two foot tall Great Horned Owl, sitting atop a belly-ripped opossum, staring at me without fear or disdain, the black bear in the back of my pickup truck going through a bag of trash and then coming upon my porch asking for more, the wild boar wandering into my yard while a neighbor and I talked, the eagle in our neighborhood, the bobcat staring at me as I drifted down a creek in my canoe and……etc., etc.
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Oh, yes…
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A red shouldered hawk visited my deck ( and my bird feeders that can be interpreted differently for hawks) a few days ago. We were maybe ten feet apart and stared at each other. I broke the spell by taking a picture and it flew off. This is what happens when I read a poem. First I am in its spell, then my mind travels to a related event, slowly circling in and out of the poem and event. Later, I will immerse myself in the poem again and perhaps take a different path, in this case one above the ocean in Big Sur, a bench where I watched the “wrinkled sea,“ birds, and a whale.
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My mind often works like yours, Barb: forking paths from the poem to other places, later flying back. Lovely comment of yours, btw.
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What a lovely post, Barb. Thank you.
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This poem has so many layers, it is carefully crafted – as all of his poems are – and it’s so very, very moving.
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Oh, yeah!
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Yes. Yes, it is.
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“The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.”
Those lines. But then every single line is worth quoting. What a poem — I didn’t know this one. I’ll go get my old, tattered “The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers” right now. Read his poetry with my second cup of tea.
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A great book, Laure-Anne. I know you love the landscape of Big Sur and the rich literature that’s been written there.
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I do, I do. Watching a hawk yesterday swooping down from a tall eucalyptus, not 50 yards from where I stood on the bluff, disappearing for no more than 5 seconds, then soaring back up with a 5 foot snake in its talons — ohhhh!
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Tor House every summer. A must x
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I envy you, Adrian.
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So many ways to answer Jeffers in this poem, and so many instances in my own life where the wild and the human become entangled.
My wife Pam’s favorite birds were bluebirds and hawks. She told me they tussled in her mind for her ultimate loyalty. When she died, and I brought home her clothes from the Hospice, there was a hawk sitting on the garbage can beside the car as I parked. It did not fly away until I finished talking to it, and had gone in the house alone.
My Uncle was an avid duck hunter, and had two retrievers who worked with him. We ate the ducks when we visited. But when Duke grew old, my uncle shot him in the woods, giving him the lead gift in the twilight. Relatives were appalled, but he reasoned that Duke loved the smell of the wild, not the disinfectant and fear smells of the Vet.
I’m glad Jeffers has been vindicated. There was a time when he was vilified for his misanthropy. May he rest in peace in hawk heaven.
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Beautiful post, Jim. Thank you.
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I love Jeffers for his passionate portrayal of nature and his unwavering commitment to peace. One of my heroes!
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