In Connemara
Driven outdoors by restlessness
that would not be ignored,
I climbed a hill in Galway
where Blake spoke to me
from his experience of mercy.
So I asked, “What is mercy?”
thinking, “Whatever its qualities
I am unadorned, waiting always
for something to end.”
Then I took to my heels,
descended from the heights to hear
locusts in the grass and crickets’ wings
give the day, the sun, and the air
a rattle like the coming of fear:
and there I found a badger.
Coat still wet from last night’s rain;
fresh-hit and laid with care
by the roadside, the solemn driver
carrying him like a drowned boy
in his bundle of soiled clothes.
A big animal, worked on now by flies
that disappeared into his ears
while the crickets kept the wake,
and the badger’s eye had the glistening look
of all salvations we will not understand,
as my road turned exultant along the lee
of the hill, then on towards the Atlantic.