by Paul Muldoon
with the offer of a tin of waffeletten
should he feel able to enlighten
him on the particular house in the Bialystok ghetto
in which his uncle is hunkering down. Asher puts his lips to the shofar
of a long-gone pacifier
as Isaac Wolf expounds to Fanny Brice (‘it’s from getto, “a foundry”, not borghetto,
a “borough”’), on that little gore, that little gusset
of ground into which my cast
of thousands of Irish schmucks have been herded, Halt.
Asher opens his eyes. Once more the storm is howling as it howled
when Isaac shouted down the board of Yale, the Black Horse Tavern still served ale,
when Sophie was found dead in the bath, a ringed plover
with all her rings stolen, Please Cover,
when Sam discontinued his line of Berbecker and Rowland upholstery nails, For Sale,
when we might yet have climbed the hill and escaped by Coppermine,
when Uncle Arnie was gut-shot (by George McManus?)
for non-payment of tight-lipped, poker-faced debts, when Helene Hanff, the celeb,
was found asleep
in the De Witt nursing home in the arms of Bulwer-Lytton, Follow Detour,
when Fanny tried to stop the leak
of a so-called confession by one Joseph Gluck
which fingered her ex-husband, Nicky Arnstein, when the trebucket of my lonely túr
was tripped for the very last time by Joe Hanff, No Egress, when a cantankerous
young Reinhart or Abrams, No Children Beyond This Point,
was borne along at shoulder height by the peaked cap, Out Of Bounds,
when the cry went up from a starving Irish schlemiel who washed an endosperm
of wheat, deh-dah, from a pile of horse-keek
held to the rain, one of those thousands of Irish schmucks who still loll, still loll and lollygag,
between the preposterous towpath and the preposterous berm.
from HORSE LATITUDES
At Least They Weren’t Speaking French
I
At least they weren’t speaking French
when my father sat with his brothers and sisters, two of each, on a ramshackle bench
at the end of a lane marked by two white stones
and made mouth music as they waited, chilled to the bone
fol-de-rol fol-de-rol fol-de-rol-di-do
for the bus meant to bring their parents back from town.
It came and went. Nothing. One sister was weighed down
by the youngest child. A grocery bag from a town more distant still, in troth.
What started as a cough
fol-de-rol fol-de-rol fol-de-rol-di-do
would briefly push him forward to some minor renown,
then shove him back, oddly summery, down
along the trench
to that far-flung realm where, at least, they weren’t speaking French.
II
At least they weren’t speaking French
when another brother, twenty-something, stepped on a nail no one had bothered to clench
in a plank thrown
halfheartedly from the known to the unknown
fol-de-rol fol-de-rol fol-de-rol-di-do
across a drainage ditch on a building site. His nut-brown arm. His leg nut-brown.
That nail sheathed in a fine down
would take no more than a week or ten days to burgeon from the froth
of that piddling little runoff
fol-de-rol fol-de-rol fol-de-rol-di-do
and make of him a green and burning tree. His septicaemia-crown.
Sowans as much as he could manage. Trying to keep that flummery down
as much as any of them could manage. However they might describe the stench,
as exhalation, as odour, at least they weren’t speaking French.
III
At least they weren’t speaking French
when those twenty-something council workers, one with a winch, the other a wrench,
would point my son and me to a long overgrown
lane marked by two faded stones
fol-de-rol fol-de-rol fol-de-rol-di-do
like two white-faced clowns
gaping at the generations who passed between them and set down
bag after grocery bag. Setting them on the table. The newspaper tablecloth.
1976. Not the East Tyrone Brigade, not Baader-Meinhof
fol-de-rol fol-de-rol fol-de-rol-di-do
bringing the suggestion of a frown
to those two mummer stones still trying to lie low, trying to keep their mummery down
to a bare minimum, two stones that, were they to speak, might blench
as much at their own giving out as our taking in that at least they weren’t speaking French.
The Old Country
I
Where every town was a tidy town
and every garden a hanging garden.
A half could be had for half a crown.
Every major artery would harden
since every meal was a square meal.
Every clothesline showed a line of undies
yet no house was in dishabille.
Every Sunday took a month of Sundays
till everyone got it off by heart
every start was a bad start
since all conclusions were foregone.
Every wood had its twist of woodbine.
Every cliff its herd of fatalistic swine.
Every runnel was a Rubicon.
II
Every runnel was a Rubicon
and every annual a hardy annual
applying itself like linen to a lawn.
Every glove compartment held a manual
and a map of the roads, major and minor.
Every major road had major roadworks.
Every wishy-washy water diviner
had stood like a bulwark
against something worth standing against.
The smell of incense left us incensed
at the firing of the fort.
Every heron was a presager
of some disaster after which, we’d wager,
every resort was a last resort.
III
Every resort was a last resort
with a harbour that harboured an old grudge.
Every sale was a selling short.
There were those who simply wouldn’t budge
from the Dandy to the Rover.
That shouting was the shouting
but for which it was all over –
the weekend, I mean, we set off on an outing
with the weekday train timetable.
Every tower was a tower of Babel
that graced each corner of a bawn
where every lookout was a poor lookout.
Every rill had its unflashy trout.
Every runnel was a Rubicon.
IV
Every runnel was a Rubicon
where every ditch was a last ditch.
Every man was ‘a grand wee mon’
whose every pitch was another sales pitch
now every boat was a burned boat.
Every cap was a cap in hand.
Every coat a trailed coat.
Every band was a gallant band
across the broken bridge
and broken ridge after broken ridge
where you couldn’t beat a stick with a big stick.
Every straight road was a straight up speed trap.
Every decision was a snap.
Every cut was a cut to the quick.
V
Every cut was a cut to the quick
when the weasel’s twist met the weasel’s tooth
and Christ was somewhat impolitic
in branding as ‘weasels fighting in a hole’, forsooth,
the petrol smugglers back on the old sod
when a
vendor of red diesel
for whom every rod was a green rod
reminded one and all that the weasel
was nowhere to be found in that same quarter.
No mere mortar could withstand a ten-inch mortar.
Every hope was a forlorn hope.
So it was that the defenders
were taken in by their own blood splendour.
Every slope was a slippery slope.
VI
Every slope was a slippery slope
where every shave was a very close shave
and money was money for old rope
where every grave was a watery grave
now every boat was, again, a burned boat.
Every dime-a-dozen rat a dime-a-dozen drowned rat
except for the whitrack, or stoat,
which the very Norsemen had down pat
as a weasel-word
though we know their speech was rather slurred.
Every time was time in the nick
just as every nick was a nick in time.
Every unsheathed sword was somehow sheathed in rime.
Every cut was a cut to the quick.
VII
Every cut was a cut to the quick
what with every feather a feather to ruffle.
Every whitrack was a whitterick.
Everyone was in a right kerfuffle
when from his hob some hobbledehoy
would venture the whitterick was a curlew.
Every wall was a wall of Troy
and every hunt a hunt in the purlieu
of a demesne so out of bounds
every hound might have been a hellhound.
At every lane end stood a milk churn
whose every dent was a sign of indenture
to some pig wormer or cattle drencher.
Every point was a point of no return.
VIII
Every point was a point of no return
for those who had signed the Covenant in blood.
Every fern was a maidenhair fern
that gave every eye an eyeful of mud
ere it was plucked out and cast into the flame.
Every rowan was a mountain ash.
Every swath-swathed mower made of his graft a game
and the hay sash
went to the kemper best fit to kemp.
Every secretary was a temp
who could shift shape
like the river goddesses Banna and Boann.
Every two-a-penny maze was, at its heart, Minoan.
Every escape was a narrow escape.
IX
Every escape was a narrow escape
where every stroke was a broad stroke
of an axe on a pig nape.
Every pig was a pig in a poke
though it scooted once through the Diamond
so unfalt – so unfalteringly.
The threshold of pain was outlimened
by the bar raised at high tea
now every scone was a drop scone.
Every ass had an ass’s jawbone
that might itself drop from grin to girn.
Every malt was a single malt.
Every pillar was a pillar of salt.
Every point was a point of no return.
X
Every point was a point of no return
where to make a mark was to overstep the mark.
Every brae had its own braw burn.
Every meadow had its meadowlark
that stood in for the laverock.
Those Norse had tried fjord after fjord
to find a tight wee place to dock.
When he made a scourge of small whin cords,
Christ drove out the moneylenders
and all the other bitter-enders
when the thing to have done was take up the slack.
Whin was to furze as furze was to gorse.
Every hobbledehoy had his hobbledyhobbyhorse.
Every track was an inside track.
XI
Every track was an inside track
where every horse had the horse sense
to know it was only a glorified hack.
Every graineen of gratitude was immense
and every platitude a familiar platitude.
Every kemple of hay was a kemple tossed in the air
by a haymaker in a hay feud.
Every chair at the barn dance a musical chair
given how every paltry poltroon
and his paltry dog could carry a tune
yet no one would carry the can
any more than Samson would carry the temple.
Every spinal column was a collapsing stemple.
Every flash was a flash in the pan.
XII
Every flash was a flash in the pan
and every border a herbaceous border
unless it happened to be an
herbaceous border as observed by the Recorder
or recorded by the Observer.
Every widdie stemmed from a willow bole.
Every fervour was a religious fervour
by which we’d fly the godforsaken hole
into which we’d been flung by it.
Every pit was a bottomless pit
out of which every pig needed a piggyback.
Every cow had subsided in its subsidy.
Biddy winked at Paddy and Paddy winked at Biddy.
Every track was an inside track.
XIII
Every track was an inside track
and every job an inside job.
Every whitterick had been a whitrack
until, from his hobbledehob,
that hobbledehobbledehoy
had insisted the whitterick was a curlew.
But every boy was still ‘one of the boys’
and every girl ‘ye girl ye’
for whom every dance was a last dance
and every chance a last chance
and every letdown a terrible letdown
from the days when every list was a laundry list
in that old country where, we reminisced,
every town was a tidy town.
It Is What It Is
It is what it is, the popping underfoot of the bubble wrap
in which Asher’s new toy came,
popping like bladder wrack on the foreshore
of a country toward which I’ve been rowing
for fifty years, my peeping from behind a tamarind
at the peeping ox and ass, the flyer for a pantomime,
the inlaid cigarette box, the shamrock-painted jug,
the New Testament bound in red leather
lying open, Lordie, on her lap
while I mull over the rules of this imperspicuous game
that seems to be missing one piece, if not more.
Her voice at the gridiron coming and going
as if snatched by a sea wind.
My mother. Shipping out for good. For good this time.
The game. The plaything spread on the rug.
The fifty years I’ve spent trying to put it together.
Turkey Buzzards
They’ve been so long above it all,
those two petals
so steeped in style they seem to stall
in the kettle
simmering over the town dump
or, better still,
the neon-flashed, X-rated rump
of fresh roadkill
courtesy of the interstate
that Eisenhower
would overtake in the home straight
by one horsepower,
the kettle where it all boils down
to the thick scent
of death, a scent of such renown
it’s given vent
to the idea buzzards can spot
a deer carcass
a mile away, smelling the rot
as, once, Marcus
Aurelius wrinkled his nose
at a gas
leak
from the Great Sewer that ran through Rome
to the Tiber
then went searching out, through the gloam,
one subscriber
to the other view that the rose,
full-blown, antique,
its no-frills ruff, the six-foot shrug
of its swing-wings,
the theologian’s and the thug’s
twin triumphings
in a buzzard’s shaved head and snood,
buzz-buzz-buzzy,
its logic in all likelihood
somewhat fuzzy,
would ever come into focus,
it ever deign
to dispense its hocus-pocus
in that same vein
as runs along an inner thigh
to where, too right,
the buzzard vouchsafes not to shy
away from shite,
its mission not to give a miss
to a bête noire,
all roly-poly, full of piss
and vinegar,
trying rather to get to grips
with the grommet
of the gut, setting its tinsnips
to that grommet
in the spray-painted hind’s hindgut
and making a
sweeping, too right, a sweeping cut
that’s so blasé
it’s hard to imagine, dear Sis,
why others shrink
from this sight of a soul in bliss,
so in the pink
from another month in the red
of the shambles,
like a rose in over its head
among brambles,
unflappable in its belief
it’s Ararat
on which the Ark would come to grief,
abjuring that
Marcus Aurelius humbug
about what springs
from earth succumbing to the tug
at its heartstrings,
reported to live past fifty,
as you yet may,
dear Sis, perhaps growing your hair
in requital,
though briefly, of whatever tears
at your vitals,
learning, perhaps, from the nifty,
nay thrifty, way
these buzzards are given to stoop
and take their ease
by letting their time-chastened poop
fall to their knees
till they’re almost as bright with lime
as their night roost,
their poop containing an enzyme
that’s known to boost
their immune systems, should they prong
themselves on small
bones in a cerebral cortex,
at no small cost
to their well-being, sinking fast
in a deer crypt,
buzzards getting the hang at last
