Classic Poem

I (The Sharp-shinned Hawk)

The day's news like a harpoon
broken off in my head —
Death Terror Deluge — I walked
crosslots and at random, hoping
to shake out. And instead
a small hawk shot past me,
flat, fast, like a missile
fired out of the sun,
and the next instant was gone
into the tree-line. Death
to something in there ...

So: death again, even
" in the peace of the late afternoon" —
when, if you were a hawk, back-lit
and fast-moving, nothing could see you
to save itself. Neither could I
help a quick catch-in-the-breath
at the dash of it, the tactical
beauty: the blue bolt
loosed at a precise instant
and dead-on. And no mercy.

But mercy is something new
in the world, isn't it? No hawk,
anyhow, ever heard of it. . . . I
even forgot, for a saving
second out there, that it ought to.