Cry of the hawk

Cry, cry, cry, keens

the Red-shouldered hawk

as she lands on the cross bar

of the utility pole on the corner

with a small snake dangling

from her talons. She tears

off delicate bites.

The language of hawks

seems to be universal;

we heard the same cries

in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

There were no actual hawks present,

it was a recording triggered by pigeons

landing on a monument honoring

Senator Auguste Scheurer-Kestner,

defender of Captain Dreyfus.

He stood and shouted in the Senate,

“The truth always wins in the end.”

But in the meantime, the very mean time,

the Jew-haters rioted in the streets and

Dreyfus spent five years on Devil’s Island

before his sentence was annulled.

And Auguste Scheurer-Kestner

was dying from throat cancer

but he followed the news of the case,

L’affair Dreyfus, from his sick room

until the day that the pardon

of Captain Dreyfus was signed.

Then he died.

Truth, truth, truth, cried the hawk

and the pigeons flew off the statue.