The Bat Deep in the forest's darkest corner, in some ancient hollow tree, you hang upside down all day long, wrapped tight in your own wings. When evening spreads her gentle veil, you unfurl those leather wings, and like a torn piece of the night, you dart through the purple sky. You are the link between two worlds— neither bird nor beast complete, flying without feathers, walking on wing-tips strange. In your silent midnight hunting, you read the language of echoes, navigating by sound's return, seeing with your ears alone. O creature of the in-between, living in the borderlands, you teach us that existence need not fit in tidy forms.

Millions upon millions of bats
have filled the world.
You must have seen these bats, surely.

With tiny black wings and
the putrid stench of sewers
they hide in darkness.

Fleeing from the breath of working people,
from life's simple current,
far from the day's blazing sun,
they conceal themselves in vile hollows.

Then when night descends—peaceful night,
when darkness shrouds the universe,
then emerge
those black swarms of bats
in the fierce exuberance of opportunists.

The fruits that have just found their youth,
the flowers of hope that have only just bloomed—
these they ravage, these they destroy.

Thus for long hours
they violate the beauty of night
then hide themselves away again in secret—
these bats you must have seen, surely.