A Red Kite hangs and slides
Along a stony ridge,
Perched on the sheer gust and bracing uplift,
Still on a windy hill sides slip.

It clings precarious, one of the last few, lone bird;
In its element on the breeze, imperious control haughty
Scouring the winter hill for carrion,
This century breeding pairs have not passed, a mere forty,

He soars and swings,
On an angular down tipped wing,
Long tail forked and angled as a rudder,
Quiet, beautiful, languid effortlessness, a steady study on the buffets of the wind.

Faint, mournful whistle over the nest tucked in the wood of sessile hanging oak,
Where soggy mosses thicken on the slope,
Swallow tailed and russet, she circles hard,
On the steep hill backing up the hill at Abergwesyn,
Stretching out above the farm and yard.

Below, the toothless old farmer, shy, of strangers
Private and suspicious, nursing his broken English,
Barking, wagging collies, mud and a few cattle, his flock of ragged sheep,
Wales, land of ages; defeat and bitter,sweet, heroic stories
Memories and noble names across these wet stones steeped.

High above the farm the hawk pair are courting, spring has come at last,
In a retreat of rounded hills, above its Celtic bryn, this fortress fast,
This farm jealous, private place, by modernity beleaguered and entirely lacking any
sense of haste, or of the shiftless quality of fate,
Here hangs the future of a people, the family of the old tongue, an ancient line,
A psyche that runs unbroken back to druid and "stone age" time.

High above the hafod, circling together still are the regal pair,
Their movements echo synchronous, they lace a rhyme,
The swallow tailed, Barcud, the British kite soaring high,
This Celtic remnant, beautiful swing,
Whorls of dance across the empty, grey, rain threatening sky,
Hard hill's frost and a last winter grimace brightening.

Peter Hack

Peter spent many years carrying-out bird surveys in mid-Wales during the 1980's and 1990's, including a period when he was employed by the RSPB as a kite warden in the Llandovery area. Our thanks to him for allowing us to reproduce his poem here.