Three New Poems by Ursula Le Guin

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Bats

i

When I used to see bats flying

in the California twilight

their intricate zigzag voices

went flickering with them

but they fell silent with the years

and without that tiny sonar static

to see them flicker

in and out of being

is a kind of blindness

ii

In the twilight in my dream

a little bat was flying

and awakening I wondered

if the bat that I remembered

flying in the twilight

of the dream of California

was in California or the dream.

Ancestry

I am such a long way from my ancestors now

in my extreme old age that I feel more one of them

than their descendant. Time comes round

in a bodily way I do not understand. Age undoes itself

and plays the Ouroboros. I the only daughter

have always been one of the tiny grandmothers,

laughing at everything, uncomprehending,

incomprehensible.

Looking Back

Remember me before I was a heap of salt,

the laughing child who seldom did

as she was told or came when she was called,

the merry girl who became Lot’s bride,

the happy woman who loved her wicked city.

Do not remember me with pity.

I saw you plodding on ahead

into the desert of your pitiless faith.

Those springs are dry, that earth is dead.

I looked back, not forward, into death.

Forgiving rains dissolve me, and I come

still disobedient, still happy, home.

About the Author

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (1929–2018) was a celebrated and beloved author of 21 novels, 11 volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, 12 children’s books, six volumes of poetry and four of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebulas, seven Hugos, and SFWA’s Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.

“Bats,” “Ancestry,” and “Looking Back,” are published here by permission of The Estate of Ursula K. Le Guin. Copyright © The Estate of Ursula K. Le Guin 2018. All rights reserved.