POETRY.
THE HUNCHBACK OF THE TWILIGHT.
I THAT fly by night,
Fluttering out at the fall of darkness From the agelong twilight Of the old rafters in the barn, And circling wildly in the gathering dusk, A terrifying shadow under the rising moon, How should I not be hated . That am neither beast nor bird ?
In the coppice the brown bird; the nightingale, Pours out her sorrow to the listening stars, But she is alien and no sister of mine Who make my bed with sorrow and am blind To all the sunlight of the waking world.
The coppice sleeps, and only one brown bird And I, who listen to her, are awake, But when I lift 'my voice above the darkness Beneath the trees to where the moon rides high, A silver ship that hooded eyes may see That dare not open for the golden galleon
Riding by day above the blinding heavens—
When I lift up my voice in little cries There's an uneasy rush of wings in the warm coppice, And a pounding of cattle-hooves upon the ground, And Fear, like a dark cloud, Drifts over the face of the moon.
Men hate me That am neither beast nor bird.
The little startled mouse that runs By night across the crumbling floor of an old building Touches some wordless pity in their hearts In the moment they entrap her.
And the birds, the birds of the air, Even the hateful birds, the carrion-crows, The vultures, Lack not altogether compassion in men's souls If only at the dreadful silent moment In which they fall thuddingly to the ground With a flapping of great black wings, Shot dead by a ploughboy's rifle.
But I, the bat, Am hated and driven out of the barn With smoke of woodfires and kindled straw, Out of the old barn into the blinding sunlight, Into hate and fear, and the unpitying ignorance Of happy normal things.
The dogs fly at me in a frenzy of anger
To tear-mein pieces between their ktrong sharp jaws, But suddenly fear- comes into their eyes, The anger goes out of them like an eddying gale, And they cower to the ground With little uneasy whining cries, As I wheel and dart blindly In the unfamiliar terrifying light of day, I that am cruelty and terror Made visible in unbeautiful flesh, Neither beast nor bird But only the bat, The hunchback of the twilight, - Wheeling all night with little hopeless cries, Lost in the haunted middle region Between sleeping and waking.
GEORGE SLOCOMBE.
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