Bat's Ultrasound
Bat's Ultrasound - meaning Summary
Sound World of Bats
Les Murray's "Bat's Ultrasound" imagines the bat's sensory world, contrasting human hearing with the high-frequency, tonal hunting of bats. The speaker enlarges the bat's ear-centric perspective, using playful phonetic language to mimic ultrasonic chatter and to collapse human time and sound into the bat's immediate aerial realm. The poem moves from natural observation to a quasi-sacred recognition of another mode of perception, blending wonder with linguistic mimicry.
Read Complete AnalysesSleeping-bagged in a duplex wing with fleas, in rock-cleft or building radar bats are darkness in miniature, their whole face one tufty crinkled ear with weak eyes, fine teeth bared to sing. Few are vampires. None flit through the mirror. Where they flutter at evening's a queer tonal hunting zone above highest C. Insect prey at the peak of our hearing drone re to their detailing tee: ah, eyrie-ire; aero hour, eh? O'er our ur-area (our era aye ere your raw row) we air our array err, yaw, row wry - aura our orrery, our eerie ü our ray, our arrow. A rare ear, our aery Yahweh.
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