Antonio Machado: "Against the blue..."

Against the blue, a ribbon

                              of black choughs,

     screeching and flapping,

             come to rest
on a stiff, leafless tree.
     One by one, the grave birds
          set themselves down
              in the stillness and silence;
              cold black notes
              on February's staff.


Tr. Don Paterson in The Eyes (1999). The concentration of description is unimprovable. Machado was a master of the descriptive epigram, not in any merely clever, worldly sense.