Drifting up-
ward,
as if purposefully
prompted—
by a brief stout sun-
eclipsing cloud,
my thick eyes
began
at once to scan the wintry morning
sky—and soon were
fixed upon
a lean but clearly
large and far-off sparrowhawk.
Swiftly turning
such
fiercely economical
and dead-
silent
circles on the cornerless wind,
they struck me—each
of my cousin's
steady
fastidious maneuvers—
as, like my own, completely rational
and beautiful
manipulations of
a given environment—but very
unlike the poem
I had
in my mind
already
begun
the task of compiling—performed
without any regard
and
completely outside
of whatever
eventual—
unconscionable goal.
