Hound at my Heels

With His mercy like an unclaimed mongrel,
Following, still following. -Ronald Duncan

I’m ash in a respectable urn.
I’m a rock rabbit blending in.
I mimic the evasions of cicadas. I’ve learned
the trick of cuttlefish—the quick camouflage.
I’m faithless, so I’ve mastered octopi:
confronted, I slip out under a cloud of ink.

But there’s a Love,
like some hound at my heels,
that I curse at, kick at, and I run
as to outrun myself, and despite my rage,
my scorn, he never leaves my side;
runs through the day,
looks up, his wet wounded eyes,
terrible with tenderness.

On my bed, I watch through the night for an escape,
he lies at my feet, dreamily awake.
I inch to the edge,
he turns to me,
and in the quietness of his eyes,
a sheer and wild mercy,
slowly undoes my disguise.

Seventy years ago, when Ronald Duncan sat composing The Mongrel, in his stone hut, high on the Cornwall cliffs, he wasn’t thinking of hikers coming in from the trail reading his words and leaving changed, or at least momentarily arrested and marked for later. He was inscribing his own transformative arch; a time he was unmasked by, and he released himself to the love and mercy of Christ.