“A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
And catches him. He clings to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting —
Her baby hangs on underneath.”

—  Randall Jarrell

"A bat is born," lines 1-31; reprinted as "Bats" in The Lost World (1965)
The Bat-Poet (1964)

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Randall Jarrell215
poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965

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