The bats are clothed in shades of night,

and only a tremor makes them distinct.

Asleep, they sniff the world upside down.

 

When flying out, as if night-water

trickling on its own, a black tide rises

and overwhelms the sky with nocturnal murmur.

 

They squeak like a small hammer tinkering

on sky’s blackened copperplate.

They see the world with their song

 

as it circles around the eternal fire, heavy with

petrified alphabets. Nothing touches them,

nothing stops their flight beneath the moon:

 

they fly zig-zagging about like chimeras

that easily pass through a needle’s eye,

and string a necklace of nightly hours –

 

black pearls invisible in daylight.