{"id":239,"date":"2011-02-07T03:14:18","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T21:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/?p=239"},"modified":"2024-11-13T22:43:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T17:13:54","slug":"hawking-revolutions-with-roosting-hawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"Hawking Revolutions with Roosting Hawks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Watching the revolt in Egypt on TV while helping my son with his poetry assignment, I had a flashback. From the depths of memory a Persian ode translated by <strong>Khushwant Singh<\/strong> popped into my head. I had read it in the <b><a href=\"http:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/?p=394\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Illustrated Weekly<\/a><\/b> in 1979 alongside a caricature of <b>Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi<\/b> following the <b>Iranian Revolution<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Think not, 0 King! thy sceptre or thy pow&#039;r<br \/>\none moment can arrest the destin&#039;d hour !<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p>Only time will tell whether the tumultuous events of the past week in the Middle East are genuinely popular movements, or are strings being pulled to replace politically-inconvenient stooge-<i>dictators<\/i> with politically-correct stooge-<i>democracies<\/i>? <\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile enjoy the powerful imagery of <b>Ted Hughes<\/b>&#039; ode to megalomaniac despots &#8211; the Hosni Mubaraks and the Ben Alis and their ilk. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/images\/hawk.jpg\" width=\"300\"><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Hawk Roosting*<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><em>I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.<br \/>\nInaction, no falsifying dream<br \/>\nBetween my hooked head and hooked feet:<br \/>\nOr in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.<br \/>\nThe convenience of the high trees!<br \/>\nThe air&#8217;s buoyancy and the sun&#8217;s ray<br \/>\nAre of advantage to me;<br \/>\nAnd the earth&#8217;s face upward for my inspection.<br \/>\nMy feet are locked upon the rough bark.<br \/>\nIt took the whole of Creation<br \/>\nTo produce my foot, my each feather:<br \/>\nNow I hold Creation in my foot<br \/>\nOr fly up, and revolve it all slowly &#8211;<br \/>\nI kill where I please because it is all mine.<br \/>\nThere is no sophistry in my body:<br \/>\nMy manners are tearing off heads &#8211;<br \/>\nThe allotment of death.<br \/>\nFor the one path of my flight is direct<br \/>\nThrough the bones of the living.<br \/>\nNo arguments assert my right:<br \/>\nThe sun is behind me.<br \/>\nNothing has changed since I began.<br \/>\nMy eye has permitted no change.<br \/>\nI am going to keep things like this.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Just brilliant !<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/images\/sign.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><strong>*\u00a9<\/strong> rests with owner. Provided gratis for educational purposes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watching the revolt in Egypt on TV while helping my son with his poetry assignment, I had a flashback. From the depths of memory a Persian ode translated by Khushwant Singh popped into my head. I had read it in the Illustrated Weekly in 1979 alongside a caricature of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi following the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1767,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/1767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmirnetwork.com\/justju\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}