Sarawak

At dusk flying foxes stream over the river

Slow steady wingbeats,

And the white ribbon of a paradise flycatcher

Homing to its nest, to its mate,

And a million bats charge out of their cave

In huge wheeling storms,

Wheel and spiral high into the sky,

Giant smoke-rings and vortices;

Limestone pinnacles rise

Sheer and white out of dark throbbing jungle;

Morning mist rises in layers,

The mountain changing blue to mauve to pink

A green heron stands motionless gazing into the water

And striped squirrels sport on a branch

As the sun shoots up like a gibbon’s whoop.

Vertiginous the chamber of Deer Cave,

Acrid with guano,

You can only gawp upwards at the distant roof,

Your whispers echoing into lostness,

While lucent water drips from gargantuan stalactites,

Dazzling crystals, gypsum trees, calcite fans.

A giant forest scorpion, nursing her brood

Of newborns, secretes milk into their mouths,

Till, after the nectar is exhausted, she

Starts devouring them.