Delicate Mercy (in a Tom Waits' Scene)

Not the holy who need salvation
Not the righteous who need a Saviour
Took a walk down on the darker side
Among those needing some undeserved favour
Mary with her fishnets all showing
Terry with a needle in his vein
Jimmy making a drop in someone’s doorway
Onya sleeping ‘neath the Belfast rain

Love is a word we yearn for
Loud but better not spoken
Grace is a delicate mercy
Fragile but never been broken

Not the know-it-all whose needing faith
Not the good-living who needs redemption
Met a doctor who came here for the sick
To bring some unexpected exemption
Sean with his gun at a border farmhouse
Rauri who put him up to it
Becky, not going to Church no more
And the arrogant bigot in the pulpit

Love is a word we yearn for
Loud but better not spoken
Grace is a delicate mercy
Fragile but never been broken

Pimps and whores and HIV
Who knows where they’ve been
They’re out tonight ‘neath heaven’s gaze
In some freaked out Tom Waits scene
Killers, thieves, guns and bullets
Just waiting to unload
The criminals may just be victims
In these ghosts of old Tom Joad

Love is a word we yearn for
Loud but better not spoken
Grace is a delicate mercy
Fragile but never been broken

Ballycastle [ March 2001 ]

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