Here is a
poem to commemorate Mother’s Day, “My Mother Would Be A Falconress” by Robert
Duncan. I’ve come across a Robert Duncan
poem or two but I’ve no memory of them, and until now I knew nothing of her
personal life. You can read about his rather
interesting life at Poets.Org
and Wikipedia,
but I don’t think his life, other than he had a mother, bears much in the
poem. His natural mother did die in
childbirth, and he was adopted. If one
really pushed a biographical reading, you might wonder which of his mothers he’s
thinking about. It could be that the
poem is a sort of imaginary transferal to being with his birth mother. Blood imagery does play an important part of
the poem, perhaps raising the suggestion of his blood mother. But none of that is really important in
appreciating the poem. Poem attributed
to Poem.Org.
I’ve added the line numbers on the right for ease of reference.
My Mother Would Be a
Falconress
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by Robert Duncan
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My mother would be a
falconress,
And I, her gay falcon
treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky
to her, bleeding, a prize,
where I dream in my
little hood with many bells (5)
jangling when I'd turn my
head.
My mother would be a
falconress,
and she sends me as far
as her will goes.
She lets me ride to the
end of her curb
where I fall back in
anguish. (10)
I dread that she will
cast me away,
for I fall, I mis-take, I
fail in her mission.
She would bring down the
little birds.
And I would bring down
the little birds.
When will she let me
bring down the little birds, (15)
pierced from their flight
with their necks broken,
their heads like flowers
limp from the stem?
I tread my mother's wrist
and would draw blood.
Behind the little hood my
eyes are hooded.
I have gone back into my
hooded silence, (20)
talking to myself and
dropping off to sleep.
For she has muffled my
dreams in the hood she has made me,
sewn round with bells,
jangling when I move.
She rides with her little
falcon upon her wrist.
She uses a barb that
brings me to cower. (25)
She sends me abroad to
try my wings
and I come back to her. I
would bring down
the little birds to her
I may not tear into, I
must bring back perfectly.
I tear at her wrist with
my beak to draw blood, (30)
and her eye holds me,
anguisht, terrifying.
She draws a limit to my
flight.
Never beyond my sight,
she says.
She trains me to fetch
and to limit myself in fetching.
She rewards me with meat
for my dinner. (35)
But I must never eat what
she sends me to bring her.
Yet it would have been
beautiful, if she would have carried me,
always, in a little hood
with the bells ringing,
at her wrist, and her
riding
to the great falcon hunt,
and me (40)
flying up to the curb of
my heart from her heart
to bring down the skylark
from the blue to her feet,
straining, and then
released for the flight.
My mother would be a
falconress,
and I her gerfalcon
raised at her will, (45)
from her wrist sent
flying, as if I were her own
pride, as if her pride
knew no limits, as if her
mind
sought in me flight
beyond the horizon.
Ah, but high, high in the
air I flew. (50)
And far, far beyond the
curb of her will,
were the blue hills where
the falcons nest.
And then I saw west to
the dying sun--
it seemd my human soul
went down in flames.
I tore at her wrist, at
the hold she had for me, (55)
until the blood ran hot
and I heard her cry out,
far, far beyond the curb
of her will
to horizons of stars
beyond the ringing hills of the world where
the falcons nest
I saw, and I tore at her
wrist with my savage beak.
I flew, as if sight flew
from the anguish in her eye beyond her sight,
sent from my striking
loose, from the cruel strike at her wrist,
striking out from the
blood to be free of her.
My mother would be a
falconress,
and even now, years after
this,
when the wounds I left
her had surely heald, (65)
and the woman is dead,
her fierce eyes closed,
and if her heart
were broken, it is stilld
I would be a falcon and
go free.
I tread her wrist and
wear the hood, (70)
talking to myself, and
would draw blood.
Allow me provide
a few thoughts on this pleasing poem. There
is an obvious central metaphor that controls the poem: the narrator (let us
assume it’s the poet himself) compares his relationship to his mother as a
falcon is to a falconer. The poem is in
thirteen non-uniform stanzas, composed of seventy-one lines, non-metrical, and
free verse. I see three major parts
dividing the poem. The first being
through stanza eight (line 49) where the relationship of child to mother,
obedient falcon to the falconress, is developed. The second from stanza nine through eleven
(line 62) is the breaking away, and the third, stanzas twelve and thirteen, is
a looking back years later.
In the first
part we see the mother as powerful, the strength, the teacher, and the nurturer
in the relationship. It's the majority of the poem. The blood that is
drawn is an intermingling, and in a strange way culminates in the narraotor's range—the falcon’s range figures prominently—being
characterized from “the curb of [his] heart from her heart” (41). In the second part, the blood drawn is a scratching
free from the mother's authority. Notice how Duncan
transitions between stanzas ten and eleven, the moment of breaking free. Duncan spills the sentence (lines 57 &
58) over the tenth to the eleventh stanza.
Every stanza ends in a period except the tenth. The spilling over suggests a break from the
form, a release, a moment of freedom. Notice
too how line 58 is extraordinarily long, a sort of flying free.
Finally in
the third section, the poet looks back and sees his mother, now long dead, the falcon still treading on her
wrist. The bond between the two is immeasurable,
continues on in perpetuity, their blood unified through nurture and
lesson. Nice poem.
Happy Mother’s
Day.