Paul Muldoon
The Frog
Comes to mind as another small upheaval Amongst the rubble. His eye matches exactly the bubble In my spirit-level. I set aside hammer and chisel And take him on the trowel. The entire population
Aisling
I was making my way home late one night This summer, when I staggered Into a snow drift. Her eyes spoke of a sloe-year, Her mouth a year of haws. Was she Aurora, or
The Sightseers
My father and mother, my brother and sister And I, with uncle Pat, our dour best-loved uncle, Had set out that Sunday afternoon in July In his broken-down Ford Not to visit some graveyard-one
Truce
It begins with one or two soldiers And one or two following With hampers over their shoulders. They might be off wildfowling As they would another Christmas Day, So gingerly they pick their steps.
Why Brownlee Left
Why Brownlee left, and where he went, Is a mystery even now. For if a man should have been content It was him; two acres of barley, One of potatoes, four bullocks, A milker,
Christo's
Two Workmen were carrying a sheet of asbestos Down the main street of Dingle; It must have been nailed, at a slight angle, To the same-sized gap between Brandon And whichever’s the next mountain.
Cows
Even as we speak, there’s a smoker’s cough From behind the whitethorn hedge: we stop dead in our tracks; A distant tingle of water into a trough. In the past half-hour-since a cattle truck
Anseo
When the master was calling the roll At the primary school in Collegelands, You were meant to call back Anseo And raise your hand As your name occurred. Anseo, meaning here, here and now,
Holy Thursday
They’re kindly here, to let us linger so late, Long after the shutters are up. A waiter glides from the kitchen with a plate Of stew, or some thick soup, And settles himself at
The Birth
Seven o’clock. The seventh day of the seventh month of the year. No sooner have I got myself up in lime-green scrubs, A sterile cap and mask, And taken my place at the head
Pineapples And Pomegranates
To think that, as a boy of thirteen, I would grapple With my first pineapple, Its exposed breast Setting itself as another test Of my will-power, knowing in my bones That it stood for
Immrama
I, too, have trailed my father’s spirit From the mud-walled cabin behind the mountain Where he was born and bred, TB and scarletina, The farm where he was first hired out, To Wigan, to
Cuba
My eldest sister arrived home that morning In her white muslin evening dress. ‘Who the hell do you think you are Running out to dances in next to nothing? As though we hadn’t enough
Promises, Promises
I am stretched out under the lean-to Of an old tobacco-shed On a farm in North Carolina. A cardinal sings from the dogwood For the love of marijuana. His song goes over my head.
Tell
He opens the scullery door, and a sudden rush Of wind, as raw as raw, Brushes past him as he himself will brush Past the stacks of straw That stood in earlier for Crow