“I've changed my ways a little, I cannot nowRun with you in the evenings along the shore,Except in a kind of dream, and you, if you dream a moment,You see me there.”

“Justice and mercy/ Are human dreams, they do not concern the birds nor the fish nor eternal God.”

“The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,The wing trails like a banner in defeat, No more to use the sky forever but live with famineAnd pain a few days: cat nor coyoteWill shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.He stands under the oak-bush and waits The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedomAnd flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it. He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.The curs of the day come and torment himAt distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head, The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes. The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to thoseThat ask mercy, not often to the arrogant. You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him; Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him. III'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtailHad nothing left but unable miseryFrom the bone 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 oldImplacable arrogance. I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but whatSoared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its risingBefore it was quite unsheathed from reality”

“Does it matter whether you hate yourself? At least love your eyes that can see, your mind that can hear the music, the thunder of the wings.”

“That public men publish falsehoodsIs nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and tum. They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors, This republic, Europe, Asia. Observe them gesticulating, Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate Man plays his part; the cold passion for truthHunts in no pack. You are not CatulIus, you know, To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty Political hatredS. Let boys want pleasure, and menStruggle for power, and women perhaps for fame, And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped. Yours is not theirs.”

“You making haste haste on decay...”

“The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrelsWith her meagre pale demoralized daughter.Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sunAnd saying that when she was first marriedShe lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon.(It is empty now, the roof has fallenBut the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoodsHave all been cut down, the oaks are standing;The place is now more solitary than ever before.)"When I was nursing my second babyMy husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brakeAnd brought it; I put its mouth to the breastRather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three babies.Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler,Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.I had more joy from that than from the others."Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad roadWith market-wagons, mean cares and decay.She is thrown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skinSoon to be shed from the earth's old eye-brows,I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries,The stir of the world, the music of the mountain.”