The Hawk

Profound, monotonous summer days
Too full to speak their peace
Brooded upon the hills
And on the ragged fields,
Pitted with filmy rock and hidden streams
That from the mountains break‒
You murmured with a smile
“If deeper silence than their own can be
Surely it falls to-day upon the lake
At Gugan Barra and the holy isle.”

We lifted up our eyes and saw the hawk,
And suddenly my heart stood still,
He hung above a distant rock
On fluttering wings until
For very pride he hovered motionless,
Remote and beautiful and dark,
And robbed the world of peace
And woke a world of anguish in my heart.

My foolish heart
That no remembrance keeps,
My heart that seeks you always while it sleeps,
My sorry heart
That wakes to find you still
Remote, still dear, still unattainable.

And still is dumb. I did not say to you
“When reason breaks
Our sky of summer blue
Its shadow makes
Life be where there should have been none,
And, mother of that brood, the heart
Dwells with the imaginations cold as stone,
Vivid as music, while she wakes.”

FRANK O'CONNOR

Source: Irish Statesman Vol 19, #24, 1928-08-18, p468