WHEN I went into my room, at
mid-morning,
Say ten
o’clock . . .
My
room, a crash-box over that great stone rattle
The Via de’ Bardi.
...
When I went into my room at
mid-morning
Why? . . . a
bird!
A bird
Flying round the room in insane
circles.
In insane circles!
. . . A
bat!
A disgusting bat
At mid- morning! . .
.
Out! Go out!
Round and round and
round
With a
twitchy, nervous, intolerable flight,
And a neurasthenic lunge,
And an impure
frenzy;
A bat, big
as a swallow.
Out, out of my room!
The Venetian shutters I push
wide
To the free,
calm upper air;
Loop
back the curtains. . . .
Now out, out from my room!
So to drive him out, flicking with
my white handkerchief:
Go!
But he will not.
Round and round and
round
In an impure
haste,
Fumbling, a
beast in air,
And
stumbling, lunging and touching the walls, the bell —
wires
About my room!
Always refusing to go out into the
air
Above that
crash-gulf of the Via de’ Bardi,
Yet blind with frenzy, with cluttered
fear.
At last he swerved into the window
bay,
But blew back,
as if an incoming wind blew him in again.
A strong inrushing
wind.
And round and round and
round!
Blundering
more insane, and leaping, in throbs, to clutch at
a
corner,
At a wire,
at a bell-rope:
On
and on, watched relentless by me, round and round in
my
room,
Round and round and dithering with
tiredness and haste and
increasing
delirium
Flicker-splashing round my room.
I would not let him
rest;
Not one
instant cleave, cling like a blot with his breast to
the
wall
In an obscure
corner.
Not an
instant!
I flicked him on,
Trying to drive him through the
window.
Again he swerved into the window
bay
And I ran
forward, to frighten him forth.
But he rose, and from a terror worse than me he
flew past me
Back
into my room, and round, round, round in my room
Clutch, cleave,
stagger,
Dropping
about the air
Getting tired.
Something seemed to blow him back
from the window
Every time he swerved at it;
Back on a strange parabola, then round, round,
dizzy in my
room.
He could
not go out,
I also
realised. . . .
It
was the light of day which he could not enter.
Any more than I could enter the
white-hot door of a blast —
furnace.
He could not plunge into the
daylight that streamed at the
window.
It was asking too much of his
nature.
Worse even than the hideous terror
of me with my hand —
kerchief
Saying: Out, go out!
. . .
Was the horror
of white daylight in the window!
So I switched on the electric light,
thinking: Now
The outside will seem brown. . .
.
But no.
The outside did not seem brown.
And he did not mind the yellow
electric light.
Silent!
He was having a silent rest.
But
never!
Not in my
room.
Round and round and
round
Near the
ceiling as if in a web,
Staggering;
Plunging, falling out of the web,
Broken in
heaviness,
Lunging
blindly,
Heavier;
And
clutching, clutching for one second’s pause,
Always, as if for one drop of
rest,
One little
drop.
And I!
Never, I say. . .
.
Go out!
Flying slower,
Seeming to stumble, to fall in
air.
Blind-weary.
Yet never able to pass the whiteness
of light into
freedom . . .
A bird would have dashed
through, come what might.
Fall, sink, lurch, and round and
round
Flicker,
flicker-heavy;
Even
wings heavy:
And
cleave in a high corner for a second, like a clot, also
a
prayer.
But
no.
Out, you
beast.
Till he fell in a corner,
palpitating, spent.
And there, a clot, he squatted and looked at me.
With sticking-out, bead-berry
eyes, black,
And
improper derisive ears,
And shut wings,
And brown, furry body.
Brown, nut-brown, fine
fur!
But it might as
well have been hair on a spider; thing
With long, black-paper
ears.
So, a dilemma!
He squatted there like
something unclean.
No, he must not squat, nor hang, obscene, in my room!
Yet nothing on earth will give him
courage to pass the
sweet fire of
day.
What then?
Hit him and kill him and throw
him away?
Nay,
I didn’t create him.
Let the God that created him be
responsible for his death . . .
Only, in the bright day, I will not have this
clot in my room.
Let the God who is maker of bats
watch with them in their
unclean corners. . .
.
I admit a God in
every crevice.
But
not bats in my room;
Nor the God of bats, while the sun shines.
So out, out you
brute! . . .
And he lunged, flight-heavy, away from me, sideways, a
sghembo!
And round and round and round
my room, a clot with wings,
Impure even in
weariness.
Wings dark skinny and flapping the
air.
Lost their
flicker.
Spent.
He fell again with a little
thud
Near the
curtain on the floor.
And there lay.
Ah death, death
You are no
solution!
Bats must
be bats.
Only life has a way out.
And the human soul is fated to
wide-eyed responsibility
In life.
So I picked him up in a flannel
jacket,
Well
covered, lest he should bite me.
For I would have had to kill him if he’d bitten
me, the
impure one.
. . .
And he hardly
stirred in my hand, muffled up.
Hastily, I shook him out of the window.
And away he went!
Fear craven in his
tail.
Great haste,
and straight, almost bird straight above the Via
de’
Bardi.
Above that
crash-gulf of exploding whips,
Towards the Borgo San
Jacopo.
And now, at evening, as he flickers
over the river
Dipping with petty triumphant flight, and tittering over
the
sun’s
departure,
I believe
he chirps, pipistrello, seeing me here on this
terrace writing:
There he sits, the long loud one!
But I am greater than he . .
.
I escaped
him. . . .
Florence.