The bat can take no pleasure in his being
what he is. His wings do not become him.
Nothing else that flies is as repugnant.
A bat's a shudder-imp, the anti-cherub.
Even a pretty face viewed upside down
appears grotesque, and—oversavage, pinched—
the bat's offends the eye when set aright.
What of it, then? The dark is not a mirror.
Children—most—are mightily impressed
with loathsomeness. Grossness recommends
the running sore, the cold fish eye dislodged.
The leaky toad is cradled in the palm.
A grand outrageous excess of detail
adorns the moldy slice of bread. The bat
insinuates himself and is applauded.
They toss their pebbles up to draw him down.
A bat's as happy dead, I would suppose.
I saw one at the Peabody Museum.
The dead let go of modesty, the need
to hide. I stared. A difference in the eyes.
Hard looks between us, through the casing glass.
Although the bat's and mine were equal as
to heartlessness, his eyes were wholly empty,
while mine retained the likeness of his glare.
It's written in the Talmud: seven years
after his death, a hypocrite becomes
a bat. The seven years seem arbitrary.
A friend of mine used Photoshop to morph
two pictures, of himself and of his wife,
to make one face. Rather awful, really.
Maybe a hypocrite's two faces joined
produce the hideous features of the bat?
The bat must fly against the lyric impulse.
He cannot sing, he has no eye for beauty.
The sound he makes is not for human ears.
It's all utilitarian technique,
enabling the detection of an object
finer than a strand of human hair
in total darkness. There's nothing he can see
to elevate his appetite to longing.
As though forbidden any kind of depth,
the bats stay on the surface of the night.
The sky becomes opaque in back of them.
There's no perspective there, no corridor
to lead the eye to where the thin white lines
begin in stars. The disconnected bats
just scribble back and forth and up and down.
They scrawl a thing that doesn't mean a thing.
It's only that the eyes of bats appear
as surfaces beneath which no depth lies.
If they are windows they are windows painted
black, and any window painted black
becomes a mirror. Who wants to see himself
in such a light, worse than no light at all,
where if the soul is thinner than a strand
of human hair it may go undetected?
I wrap myself in darkness and go out
to walk along the pier. No wind this hour,
but only time that moves around and past me,
whispering in its several languages
some words the bats may comprehend, not I.
They gather black on black against the sky;
obscure and foreign are the passages
they copy in the margins of the night.
From Poetry Magazine, Vol. 187, no. 2 November 2005. Used with permission.
what he is. His wings do not become him.
Nothing else that flies is as repugnant.
A bat's a shudder-imp, the anti-cherub.
Even a pretty face viewed upside down
appears grotesque, and—oversavage, pinched—
the bat's offends the eye when set aright.
What of it, then? The dark is not a mirror.
Children—most—are mightily impressed
with loathsomeness. Grossness recommends
the running sore, the cold fish eye dislodged.
The leaky toad is cradled in the palm.
A grand outrageous excess of detail
adorns the moldy slice of bread. The bat
insinuates himself and is applauded.
They toss their pebbles up to draw him down.
A bat's as happy dead, I would suppose.
I saw one at the Peabody Museum.
The dead let go of modesty, the need
to hide. I stared. A difference in the eyes.
Hard looks between us, through the casing glass.
Although the bat's and mine were equal as
to heartlessness, his eyes were wholly empty,
while mine retained the likeness of his glare.
It's written in the Talmud: seven years
after his death, a hypocrite becomes
a bat. The seven years seem arbitrary.
A friend of mine used Photoshop to morph
two pictures, of himself and of his wife,
to make one face. Rather awful, really.
Maybe a hypocrite's two faces joined
produce the hideous features of the bat?
The bat must fly against the lyric impulse.
He cannot sing, he has no eye for beauty.
The sound he makes is not for human ears.
It's all utilitarian technique,
enabling the detection of an object
finer than a strand of human hair
in total darkness. There's nothing he can see
to elevate his appetite to longing.
As though forbidden any kind of depth,
the bats stay on the surface of the night.
The sky becomes opaque in back of them.
There's no perspective there, no corridor
to lead the eye to where the thin white lines
begin in stars. The disconnected bats
just scribble back and forth and up and down.
They scrawl a thing that doesn't mean a thing.
It's only that the eyes of bats appear
as surfaces beneath which no depth lies.
If they are windows they are windows painted
black, and any window painted black
becomes a mirror. Who wants to see himself
in such a light, worse than no light at all,
where if the soul is thinner than a strand
of human hair it may go undetected?
I wrap myself in darkness and go out
to walk along the pier. No wind this hour,
but only time that moves around and past me,
whispering in its several languages
some words the bats may comprehend, not I.
They gather black on black against the sky;
obscure and foreign are the passages
they copy in the margins of the night.
From Poetry Magazine, Vol. 187, no. 2 November 2005. Used with permission.