Second Cambridge Poem

Since You Asked


Since you asked, I would become this:
a vast falcon-like thing,
with dark pinions, or with bright,
outstretched above the boys in their foxholes,

above the shining-haired girls being beaten
on the street because of their beauty,
between the mothers and the grind of toil
that made them hags before their time.

Hawk-like, owlish, eagle-like, I would cover
as they do the fierce chicks, the little ones,
against the tangle of insignia
that preys in wicked majesty upon the world.

Nor would I feel the need in this
to be particularly forgiving:
a rumor in the night,
a trembling of air between the poles.

I see one bent over, holding with sharp claw,
eating their hearts even as they ate. Let it be me.
I would have them finally written out.
Set me watching in the iron tree.