The Badger

Driving from Durrus to Ballydehob
to see for myself the family farmhouse
they burned my grandmother out of

a hundred years ago the hedgerow
on my right gives way to intermittent
flashes of the lovely spangle of the bay

we leave behind to turn inland and east
for the townland Lisheennacreagh,
which means a little ringfort in a field.

                                   *

They gave them two days to leave, then torched
the barn for emphasis, and somehow scores
of pigs and sheep and horses, and Martha,

and eleven siblings, got herded on
the Cork train, then more trains north
to south Armagh, and it might have been

the next left there was the badger dead
in the middle of the road and I
should stop and push it to one side.

                                   *

The body flows towards a complete halt
at the tip of the stamp pad of its still
damp nose. Wedge of head. Stockinged legs.

Across the eyes that famous black strip
less like some burglar’s mask
or highwayman’s disguise

and more the final stripe the warriors,
fiercest of the tribe, solemnly apply
before they leave to meet the enemy.

                                   *

I had the spade for digging lugworm
in the boot and used it, prising the badger’s
body awkwardly across the hot tarmac

and into the long grass. I refute it thus.
Its weight and heft were some kind of answer
but the question was unclear. By the time

my grandmother died she was again a child
crying wildly, seeing everywhere
the faces of her own mother and father.