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The Spike [or Victoria University College Review 1961]

I — Hawk and Rabbit

I

Hawk and Rabbit

The Hawk is death, is buffeting the air
Above a blue but lost horizon.
No clouds, no other wings in sight,
No sun even, just the bare
Chill of infinity — and his eyes
Burning across the quiet fields, to where

Sleek in his innocence the rabbit lingers,
Tingling to stiffness, half aware
That time has already stopped. He nibbles
His green day back to comfort, stays his fear
Just long enough to let that far speck stumble
Upon a dark, insidious dive, that waits

To whistle across the landscape like a breeze.
In between cold fur and burning feathers
A farmer ploughs his customary scene.
Long furrows creep behind him, but he steps
Into his future like a visionary —
Half turning to trace where he has been.

His is the dead end of domesticity;
The groan of earth's deep bowels; he heaves
The whole weight of his days across
His turning fields — unseeing, sees
Only the crisp curd of his passage curl
The soil aside. He hardly breathes,

Intent on some dim pattern marked
Upon the ground beneath him. See
How light leaps in to cauterize those weals.
As he turns, a falling hawk
Will haul this more than likely scene
Into one small corner, one red pin-head

Of sudden violence where a life will bleed.
Meanwhile, the farmer ploughs his field
Into eternity — where even now
The lingering rabbit outstays its scream,
The hawk hangs suspended by its burning eyes;
The farmer is the landscape he would be.