You and I Saw Hawks Exchanging the Prey

James Wright

They did the deed of darkness

In their own mid-light.

He plucked a gray field mouse

Suddenly in the wind.

The small dead fly alive

Helplessly in his beak,

His cold pride, helpless.

All she receives is life.

They are terrified. They touch.

Life is too much.

She flies away sorrowing.

Sorrowing, she goes alone.

Then her small falcon, gone.

Will not rise here again.

Smaller than she, he goes

Claw beneath claw beneath 

Needles and leaning boughs,

While she, the lovelier 

Of these brief differing two,

Floats away sorrowing,

Tall as my love for you,

And almost lonelier.

Delighted in the delighting,

I love you in mid-air,

I love myself the ground.

The great wings sings nothing

Lightly. Lightly fall.