Hawk Tongue
‘the beautiful youth appears, haloed with green life…’ by Kevan Manwaring 2019
Hawk Tongue
You can be counting sheep when it happens,
in that friable terrain between waking and sleeping –
head heavy, shoulders drooping
(as though laden with a wool-sack)
when in a sigil of summer lightning
the beautiful youth appears,
haloed with green life
golden limbed, quiver brimming
with keen-fletched darts.
Upon his wrist, a deadly weapon of
talons, pinions, beak, and eyes
of angry fire.
You don’t know whether to rise to greet him,
this strange friend, welcoming foe, or flee.
You have known of him all of your life
and now you are terrified
for he summons you from
the slumbering hills.
Fist raised, he releases his feathered prayer –
death-line, as it swoops in for the coup de grâce,
straight into the O of your open mouth,
to small for it, spitting plumage,
as it burrows down your gullet,
exploding lungs, lurching stomach.
Your scream becomes a shriek,
and eyes burn with flame of a stolen sun.
Shuddering, you flap your arms uselessly.
but when you begin to speak
words like wings fly from your mouth.
Kevan Manwaring © 2019
This tantalising folkloric fragment (contained in a letter to the antiquary John Aubrey from the Welsh metaphysical poet, Henry Vaughan) has haunted me for a number of years since I came across it in a tome on bardic lore. I recently worked it up into a story and poem for performance at The Fairy Gathering, Dungworth, held in early May.
