编者按：沃伦，美国历史上第一个获得国会图书馆桂冠诗人称号的人，先后获得过一次小说普利策奖和两次诗歌普利策奖，这个记录至今无人打破。这首诗中的夜鹰究竟象征着什么？也许它只是一个隐喻，一个关于黑夜的隐喻；又或者是一个启示，一个带来黑暗同时带来寂静的使者，它促使我们在时间断裂的地方，去回味知识和历史，去谛听地球格格转动的声音。

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.