I haven’t read my books of W B Yeats poems for a while and find myself drawn in once more by his insight and intrigued by his observations. I wrote a similar poem about the tethering of birds of prey for man’s enjoyment. Here Yeats speaks from the hawk’s point of view:
From The Hawk – W B Yeats
‘I will not be clapped in a hood,
Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,
Now I have learnt to be proud
Hovering over the wood
In the broken mist
Or tumbling cloud.’
‘What tumbling cloud did you cleave,
Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,
Last evening’? that I, who had sat
Dumbfounded before a knave,
Should give to my friend
A pretence of wit.’
This is my offering on a similar topic:
Fly Free (be not halt for me)
Halt by jesse, bell and piece of rope:
Three hunters tethered
Of freedom in this misty land
They have no hope.
People gawp around the pen –
They stare and gape – and when ’tis done,
Will walk forgetting in the sun
Proud hawk
and feisty falcon.
Eagle owl is now the star:
Wings outstretched, Nature’s majesty,
Flies four yards to gather in
Day-old meat
Held out on sorry hand.
Spectacle is all they are –
Dependent on man
Who loves, but wrongly
Misguided gaoler.
best wishes for a kinder world – Denny Bradbury
