April is National Poetry Month! Robinson Jeffers: "Hurt Hawks"

Robinson Jeffers is still depressing and misanthropic. Honestly, though, I like him for it.


Excerpt from "Hurt Hawks," stanza II.

I'd sooner, except for the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtail
Has 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 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 and 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.

and now my night is made

OH FOR GOD'S SAKE. Why didn't anyone TELL me that my favorite band in the world, The Decemberists, released a new album last month? And that it revisits and expands on the same conceptual territory as The Tain, which was 17 minutes of unbridled glory?

Jeez.