This poem reminded me of the many other views in the world, and of how many things change as we age.  

	The title also particularly caught my interest because it made me think of a different meaning than the 

	poem gives out.

	Grackles, Goodbye 

	--Robert Penn Warren

	Black of grackles glints purple as, wheeling in sun-glare,

	The flock splays away to pepper the blueness of distance.

	Soon they are lost in the tracklessness of air.

	I watch them go. I stand in my trance.

	Another year gone. In trance of realization,

	I remember once seeing a first fall leaf, flame-red, release

	Bough-grip, and seek, through gold light of the season's sun,

	Black gloss of a mountain pool, and there drift in peace.

	Another year gone. And once my mother's hand

	Held mine while I kicked the piled yellow leaves on the lawn

	And laughed, not knowing some yellow-leaf season I'd stand

	And see the hole filled. How they spread their obscene fake lawn.

	Who needs the undertaker's sick lie

	Flung thus in the teeth of Time, and the earth's spin and tilt?

	What kind of fool would promote that kind of lie?

	Even sunrise and sunset convict the half-wit of guilt.

	Grackles, goodbye! The sky will be vacant and lonely

	Till again I hear your horde's rusty creak high above,

	Confirming the year's turn and the fact that only, only,

	In the name of Death do we learn the true name of Love.

I chose this poem because of the intriguing details used to describe the hawk’s journey.  In this poem  Warren is looking into the sky and sees a hawk soaring above him.  He recalls the hawks journey and relates it to his own life.  The extended metaphor between life and the journey also helped to peak my interest. 

Evening Hawk

---Robert Penn Warren

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through

Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,

Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding

The last tumultuous avalanche of

Light above pines and the guttural gorge,

The hawk comes.

               His wing

Scythes down another day, his motion 

Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear

The crashless fall of stalks of Time.

The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error.

Look!  Look!  he is climbing the last light

Who knows neither Time nor error, and under

Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings

Into shadow.

          Long now,

The last thrush is still, the last bat

Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics.  His wisdom

Is ancient, too, and immense.  The star

Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain.

If there were no wind we might, we think, hear

The earth grind on its axis, or history

Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the 

cellar.

Mortal Limits

I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming.

It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags

Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming

Of dream-spectral light above the lazy purity of snow-snags.

There--west--were the Tetons.  Snow-peaks would soon be

In dark profile to break constellations.  Beyond what height

Hangs now the black speck?  Beyond what range will gold eyes see

New ranges rise to mark a last scrawl of light?

Or, having tasted that atmosphere's thinness, does it

Hang motionless in dying vision before

It knows it will accept the mortal limit,

And swing into the great circular downwardness that will restore

The breath of earth?  Of rock?  Of rot?  Of other such

Items, and the darkness of whatever dream we clutch?

Analytical Paragraph About "Mortal Limits"

In "Mortal Limits" Robert Penn Warren articulates the senses a hawk feels when it flies as he watches it from below.  Whilst in Wyoming Warren sees a hawk, soaring through the sky, and his imagination hooks onto this hawk, following it through its journeys and seeing through its eyes.  Warren shows that every thing has to stop somewhere, and this hawk starts spiraling downward, when it hits, the "Mortal Limit".  His understanding of such limits is presented when he states, "having tasted that atmosphere's thinness, does it/ Hang motionless in dying vision before/ It knows it will accept the mortal limit/And swing into the great circular downwardness that will restore".  This quote shows that all things have limits; this hawks limitation being the limit to the height it can fly, because, like Warren, it cannot pass the mortal limits in life.  When Warren refers to limits not being able to be passed, he could be referring to his own seeing disability.