Hawk

Hawk – A poem by: Keki Daruwalla – An Analysis
Daruwalla‟s poem „Hawk‟ has an interesting interplay of perspective. His poem

begins in the first person where the poet recounts seeing a hawk. The first
stanza has an almost primitive aggression where the predatory aspects of the
hawk are capitulated. The recurrent image is that of a bird filled with hatred
that swoops down on its prey without mercy. This is the nature of a hawk but if
this image is disturbing then the domesticated hawk that falls under man‟s
shadow is a monster created by man solely for his own purposes.
“The tamed one is worse, for he is touched by man.

Hawking is turned to a ritual, the predator‟s
passion honed to an art;”
Man is shown to be crueler than the hawk for by nature a hawk is a predator
that must kill to eat but man makes the hawk kill for his own pleasure and
diversion which is a pervasion of what the hawk must do. And this is not the
end of it; a captured hawk is at first blinded. Its eyes are sewn up and bit by bit
the stitches are removed. The pain and such perverted treatment are enough to
make a devil of a saint so it is not surprising that the hawk when allowed to
hunt take out all its hate on its prey and shows no mercy for it get none. Thus,
the domesticated hawk is even more formidable than one from the wild.
The third stanza is a haunting depiction of a hunt where a mother hawk
teaches her son to hunt. They chase after a hare and since they cannot kill it at
once they swoop down repeatedly tearing at its flesh. In the fourth stanza we
have the domesticated hawk speaking out. it is again a first person perspective
but it is the hawk speaking and what is more terrible is that many a human
too has the same agenda the hawk charts out. Does this mean civilized or
domesticated man is the worst of all predators?
“They can‟t kill him in one fell swoop.

But each time the talons cart away
a patch of ripped fur.
He diminishes one talon-morsel at a time.”
Just like the cut-throat modern world where the stronger crush the weaker, the
hawk filled with hate sets out to kill its prey. Many a time people‟s experiences
embitter them so much that they in turn begin to prey on people who once
resembled what they went out to seek. The hawk is not merely a domesticated
hawk; it is a killer with the voice of a man who is so filled with apathy for life
that he sees no pain in hurting others. The hawk is a metaphor “as people did
to me so I shall now do to them‟.
“But I am learning how to spot the ones

crying for the right to dream, the right to flesh,”
“trained for havoc,
my eyes focused on them
like the sights of a gun.”
“During the big drought which is surely going to come

the doves will look up for clouds, and it will rain hawks.”
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The hawk is a powerful metaphor used by Daruwalla in his poetry. It is

marvelously employed in the poem ―Hawk in The Keeper of the Dead (1982) .
Here it operates as a metaphor of ferocity, strength, and violence. While it looks
down from a great height; it is filled with hate and fury:
But he was lost

In his widening wheel
A frustrated parricide on the kill.
The fuse of his hate was burning still.
The usual victims of its passion/fury are crows, mynahs, pigeons and
parakeets. And when it is in a mood of hunting, it spots its victim and then
swoops on it in great speed:
And then he ran amok,

A rapist in the harem of the sky,
As he went up with a pigeon
Skewered to his heel- talon
He scanned the other birds ….
It scanned the other birds„ to prey upon them next time.
The opening poem, ―Hawk‖, evokes the image of this ferocious bird preying
upon meeker birds and beasts. The Hawk is full of hate for other creatures, as
he runs mad in his rage-
A rapist in the harem of the sky.
It is pity that man has turned to hawking as a pastime. The following lines
reveal this fact:
The tamed one is worse, for he is touched by man.
Hawking is turned to a ritual, the predators
Passion honed to an art;
As they feed the hawk by carving the breast
Of the quarry bird and gouging out his heart.
The third poetic verse shows the hunting of a hare by mother hawk and son„,
but they can„t kill him in one fell swoop. Eventually, the hare is killed by the
two hawks.
The fourth and last verse has a change of tone, and the third person hawk
becomes the first person hawk. Now, the hawk is learning how to hunt the
dreamer and the freedom-lover
But I am learning how to spot the ones
Crying for the right to dream, the right to flesh,
The right to sleep with their own wives, --
I have placed them. I am sniffing
The air currents, deciding when to pounce,
Some scholars have associated the metaphor of hawk with a rebel who wants
to do away with the rotten or unjust social system, but he thinks it is, more
rightly, associated with the agency of exploitation, killing and destruction, as
clearly mentioned in the above passage. The hawk„s aim is to spot the weak
and the innocent, who are pursuing their day-to-day activities in a peaceful
manner and to pounce upon them to finish them off. The expression ‗I am
sniffing the air denotes that the hawk is a great opportunist seeking for the
right moment to jump upon the other birds and beasts. Moreover, the hawk is
depicted as ―trained for havoc .
At the close of the poem, the idea of hawk being a destructive and ruinous
force is further reinforced. The last two lines run as under:
During the big drought which is surely going to come
The doves will look up for clouds, and it will rain hawks.
Haer the doves„ are a symbol of innocence and loveliness, and ‗the hawk„ that
of destruction and death in this poem.
The hawk has already captured a pigeon and kept it screwed up to his heel-
talon. The hawk, through its ferocity, becomes a symbol of power and
dominance, of ferocity and violence.
The poem ―Hawk‖ is primarily on the theme of the use of brutal force and
violence, as the hawk symbolizes. The hawk is a bird of prey, and other birds
are afraid of it:

A rapist in the harem of sky.
As he went up with a pigeon
Skewered to his heel-talon
He scanned the other birds, marking out their fate,
The ones he would scoop up next,
Those black dregs in the cup of his hate.
This time the hawk has picked up a pigeon, next time he will choose the things
one by one. At the end of the poem, we come across the following lines:
During the big drought which issurely going to come
Doves will look up for clouds, and it will rain hawks.
The hawk is, thus, a fierce bird that brings death and destruction to other mild
birds.
Hawk by Daruwalla is one of those poems written in the annals of Indian

poetry in English which deal with the hawk, its nature, instinct and behaviour;
a bird of prey, bringing to our memory the Tennysonian line, nature red in
tooth and claw, the Blakian duality between the innocent lamb and the bloody
tiger and the Wordsworthian dictum, what man has made of man?
The poem one in the line of others, The Tiger, Pied Beauty and so on, tells of
the contrast and contradiction. Daruwalla, a poet of tragedy and tragic vision,
he cannot let it go, as the Shelleyian wild, tameless and swift is the case study
of his.
What it is dark will remain it dark unto the last, is the thing to be taken into
consideration. We do not if Daruwalla has studied the poems of Ted Hughes or
not, but something like that of his poetry is readily available in him.
The other thing of deliberation is this that Daruwalla as a poet is a Parsi and
the Parsis like to place their dead on the Towers of Silence as for the birds of
prey to circle over, perch and feed upon to cleanse the flesh.
While discussing the poem, the Divine Scheme of Things, the Plan and its
Execution, the eco-balance and survival of the fittest come to the fore.
There was a time when the hunters used to think of training and using it for
hunting, but now the number shave fallen miserably and these are rarely
sighted, maybe it that one day these go extinct, but that is not the question
here.
It is a poem of a wild bird, the hawk, swopping down and taking for a kill; of
the glare of the eyes and a mind-set with the desire and dream of hunting and
killing.
The ruthlessness and ferocity of it; the bestiality and brutality; the wrath and
vengeance, is clear to us all, as it thrives on its vision and mission of life and it
is natural that the child of it too will be the same, as we cannot nature. But the
one used by the hunter to keep as a trap is the worst of all.

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Hawk – A poem by: Keki Daruwalla – An Analysis

Daruwalla‟s poem „Hawk‟ has an interesting interplay of perspective. His poem

“The tamed one is worse, for he is touched by man.

“They can‟t kill him in one fell swoop.

“But I am learning how to spot the ones

“During the big drought which is surely going to come

The hawk is a powerful metaphor used by Daruwalla in his poetry. It is

But he was lost

And then he ran amok,

It scanned the other birds„ to prey upon them next time.

And then he ran amok,

Hawk by Daruwalla is one of those poems written in the annals of Indian

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