Hawk Roosting

[ Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes ]

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. 

Summary of Hawk Roosting

  

I, a hawk, sit at the top of the forest with my eyes shut. I'm doing nothing, holding no false dreams between my head's curved beak and the curved talons of my feet. In my sleep, I dream about killing my prey perfectly and eating them.

The trees are so well-suited to my way of being! The air I float on and the sun's light seem perfectly adapted to my way of life, and the earth faces the sky so I can inspect it.

My feet are gripped tightly to the branch. It took millions of years to make my foot, and every single feather. Sometimes, I hold other products of Creation in my foot when I catch them.

Other times I soar high into the sky, revolving the world around me as I spiral up in slow circles. I kill when and where I want, because the world belongs to me. I have no use for clever but false logical thinking: my politeness is ripping the heads off my prey—

That's how death gets dished out. And my one true way takes me straight through life, causing others to die. I need no logical justifications for my actions.

I fly between the earth and the sun, and it has always been this way. My gaze has not allowed anything to changed. I will keep things like this forever.