| Now at spring’s awakening, short days are lengthening | |
| and after St. Bridget’s Day. I’ll set my sail. | |
| A blind man, on a stone bridge in Galway | |
| or the road to Loughrea, felt the sun’s rays | |
| in his bones again and praised the sycamore and oak, | 5 |
| crops still drowsy in the seed, wheat, flax and oats. | |
| His song rising, he praised Achill’s eagle, Erne’s hawk | |
| and in beloved Mayo, young lambs, kids, foals, | |
| and little babies turning towards birth. | |
| Blind Raftery invoked Bridget, Ceres of the North, | 10 |
| born into slavery at Faughart, near Dundalk | |
| to an Irish chieftain and a foreign slave. | |
| Why, of all small girls in so distant a century born | |
| is she honoured still, in place-names, constant wells, | |
| new rushes plaited to protect hearth, home, and herd? | 15 |
| Bridget, goddess, druidess of oak, or saint - a girl | |
| who gifted her father’s sword to a beggar for bread, | |
| we, who have wounded the engendering seas and earth, | |
| beg you to teach us again, before it grows too late, | |
| your neglected, painstaking arts of nature and of care. | 20 |