Contemporary work

BIRDS OF PREY

Birds of prey, maybe a dozen, soar

in windless heights of air that dwarf the Island.

Their species? The long and tapering wings,

bodies that brief and presence in Paris

deny them a name, deliver them from their names.

*

They evolve their singular fiction

in a visible nowhere above the City.

They seem to gaze fixedly on timorous creatures,

scanning the naked Cathedral square

for shrew and vole crouched in the undergrowth.

*

Up there they wheel and turn

Nonchalantly their being, who-they-are.

Michael Edwards

By their twin scimitars they cleave through time,

Ceaselessly moving the centres of their dance,

Scorning words and the possessing stare.