browngirl: (fresco)
browngirl ([personal profile] browngirl) wrote2012-07-30 09:07 am

"Revising into deepening violet."

It's a Monday, and the first day back after a holiday, and thus busy. So this is a note to myself as well as a journal entry, to investigate the beautiful poetry of A. E. Stallings.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/181587#about

http://www.versedaily.org/affinitybats.shtml

[identity profile] browngirl.livejournal.com 2013-06-01 02:38 am (UTC)(link)
Explaining an Affinity for Bats

That they are only glimpsed in silhouette,
And seem something else at first—a swallow—
And move like new tunes, difficult to follow,
Staggering towards an obstacle they yet
Avoid in a last-minute pirouette,
Somehow telling solid things from hollow,
Sounding out how high a space, or shallow,
Revising into deepening violet.

That they sing—not the way the songbird sings
(Whose song is rote, to ornament, finesse)—
But travel by a sort of song that rings
True not in utterance, but harkenings,
Who find their way by calling into darkness
To hear their voice bounce off the shape of things.