by Paul Muldoon
The doctor is cocking an ear to your chest’s tumble-de-drum
like a man trying to open a safe.
To add to the confusion, Ben’s still trying to crack a lobster claw
with a lobster claw made of titanium.
Ben has somehow been playing scuffle on his washboard abs
while eating all that treif.
It looks like 1961. Or ’65. No time before a few squatters from the prefabs
in Dungannon morph into the crowd the paratroopers strafe
on Bloody Sunday. A golden dolphin marks the lap run by each new
Roman tribune. Whitelaw. Pym. Rees. Mason.
Atkins. Prior. Hurd. King. Brooke. Mayhew.
Dense, too, the fog when each Halloween Ben ducks in an enamel basin
for an enamel apple
and comes up with a botched job.
Such is the integrity of their kraal the horses will find no slot
in the funeral cortege of Winston Churchill from the Royal Chapel
to Woodstock. As his carriage passes the dolphins bob
for a commoner’s mere 19- rather than an all-stops-pulled 21-gun salute.
Along the Thames, meanwhile, even the cranes will bow
and scrape as the coffin passes the Isle of Dogs and the citizenry grapple
with their sense of loss. The Havengore’s prow
will no more shake off a water dapple
than we’ll concede we’ve been excluded from a race.
It looks as if Little Miss Messala, played by a Belfast boy, will clutch
at the idea he might drive a tea-chest bass
to victory. Ben paces the afterdeck in the knowledge that as much
as we have sheltered them
our children will now feel obliged to shelter us
from some harshness we’re not fit to bear. They’ll glom onto the gliomach
shut out of its lorica segmentata while expecting us to condemn
wholesale the tattooed gulpin, the tatty glamour-puss,
not to speak of the other stuff they know we’ll find hard to stomach.
That’s right, Lew, you’ll have Ben pace the afterdeck of a war galley
to which he’s been consigned for having made an ad hominem
remark about a minister who banned a civil rights rally.
Though the top hem
of my childhood bedroom curtain’s concealed by a pelmet
it clearly has the makings of a Roman cape.
Take the idea of a bird nesting in a bicycle helmet
some kid’s hung by the garage door. The nest follows the nape
no less intently than the truth twisters and tub thumpers
will relocate your Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ
from Judaea to an army outpost
near Jonesborough or Cullaville. These wouldn’t be the first parachute jumpers
to have been enticed
into a honeypot and then by honeybees beset.
Sometimes the elephant in the room’s the single war elephant
Caesar loosed on the Britons one bank-holiday weekend the traffic was bumper-
to-bumper. To add to the confusion, the evidence is scant
that the Hourihanes were ever actually reduced to eating Lumpers
in the 1830s. They may well have lived in the nether regions
of Tyrone where the Famine wouldn’t hit so hard. That’s right, Lew, they weren’t swept
underfoot by the Ninth Legion
along with the rest of the evidence. Why did someone try to intercept
your letter to Billy the Kid? In 1933, Seosamh Mac Grianna would follow word for word
your purple-inked prose
as he rendered Ben Hur into Gaelic for An Gúm.
To add to the confusion the bird
has single-mindedly begun to transpose
materials from an abandoned site – cloak wool, horsehair, an eagle plume.
That’s right, Lew, what we’re looking at is a feather from a hawk or bald eagle
worn by the girl to whom you yourself transferred
your affections shortly after you were appointed to that regal (or viceregal)
post in New Mexico. Many of us remember how you’d gird
your loins for a three-day fact-finding mission
with Willie Whitelaw. That’s when we first saw Messala twitch
through the partition
in a cowshed where he’d been tortured as a snitch
by four Mescaleros. Messala wouldn’t have been the first soldier to marry
a local girl. Nor would he have been the first to spill
his guts under interrogation. Did Christ offer Ben water from an 1858 army canteen
or the 1874 model? It was on the rifle range at Barry’s
amusement park that Ben may first have thought of countering the shoot-to-kill
policy by which Billy the Kid was gunned down.
Ben knows a Barrett semiautomatic rifle fitted with a Vari-X sight has got the job done
at distances of over a mile. There’s really no way to parry
that infrared light. As to who masterminded the bomb run,
the records are almost as fragmentary
as the tile that clattered down from the roof of Ben’s council flat
and spooked the prefect’s mount.
The Lincoln County War, in which you tried to intervene, was another tit-for-tat
war fought between Prods and Papes. The body count
should include the glamour-puss Haya Harareet
as Esther. It must have been during the process of data capture
there was some mash-up of the ‘coyote brush’
and her little ‘pleat’.
Then there’s Cathy O’Donnell, who plays Tirzah, ‘she who brings rapture’,
and on whom Messala might once have had a crush.
The shieling on Slieve Gullion. Oíche Shamhna. Messala’s head shoved underwater
in a bucket. Hands tied behind him. A little meet and greet
with the Magna Mater.
Divination by fruit and nuts. As for the suggestion that the BNM stamped on those peat
briquettes stands not for Bord na Móna
but Banca Naţională a Moldovei, that’s got to be a load of balderdash.
It comes as no surprise the Roman goddess Pomona
oversees a cache
of linen-factory data, albeit incomplete,
written on onionskin. It turns out that Ben Hur is a patronymic
meaning ‘Son of White Linen’. ‘Ben’ like the ‘Mac’ in Seosamh Mac Grianna,
erstwhile political prisoner. A Loyalist gunman has been known to yell ‘Trick or Treat’
as he opens fire with a semiautomatic. The dolphins continue to mimic
the obeisance of the dock cranes.
That’s right, Lew, the obeisance of the dock cranes seems to mark another lap
of the Macedonian pirate fleet
around the Cinecittà tank. Why not fit a motion-sensitive booby trap
to the Canary Wharf bomb? A Pape had as much chance of winning a council seat
as a bird does of representing the abandoned site.
Yes, Lew, that Boston electoral district really did take the shape of a salamander.
The fact that Ben Hourihane’s toga is lime-white
is emblematic of his essential candour
while the Barrett semiautomatic is seen to swivel
even as Little Miss Messala writhes
in anticipation of the amputation saw. As you drove out of Santa Fe in your gig,
Lew, it must have struck you that one way to cut through the drivel
is by welding scythes
onto the hubcaps of what was otherwise a regulation-black Humber Pig.
The pivotal point of Bloody Sunday sees a Humber Pig spinning its wheels
while Father Edward Daly has the Divil’s
own job of escorting a dying man off
the field. Many of us remember Whitelaw’s spiel
about there being no granting of the privi-
lege of ‘political status’ to the prisoners in Magilligan and Long Kesh
despite the acknowledgement of their being ‘special category’. It was by dint
of becoming tribune, Lew, you became enmeshed
in mortality. I think of George Bernard Shaw’s household hint
about being patient with the poor funeral attendees who snivel
because they think they ought to live forever. Maybe it’s best to put on our purple togs
and fall in with the cavalcade
that frolics and frivols
through the streets of Jerusalem to the Isle of Dogs.
The accoutrements of empire. The opportunistic bracken’s rusting blade.
The loathsome Squirt Pig was so named because it was fitted with a water cannon
before which all resistance would be shown to shrivel.
It was deployed in Dungannon
in an attempt to cut down all that civil
rights stuff about ‘One Man One Vote’. An extra in the parade was brought to book
for wearing a hackle on a Balmoral
instead of a tam-o’-shanter. Pomona wields a pruning hook.
In 1959, the same year Ben Hur took the laurels,
Seosamh Mac Grianna suffered the loss
of his wife and son. Both committing suicide. Both throwing off their yokes.
Mac Grianna would spend his final thirty-one years in a psychiatric
hospital in Letterkenny. That’s right, Lew, each of us has his cross
to bear. An explosive charge fitted to the spokes
of one wheel will as readily put paid to the Ford Cortina as the Roman quadriga.
The cover of An Gúm’s edition of Ben Hur sets it firmly in the Third Reich.
My childhood bedroom was divided by an earthwork fosse
that connected it to the Black Pig’s Dyke.
The Squirt Pig, meanwhile, was painted in Admiralty-grey semigloss
meant to ward off those nightscopes. Disinformation about a dawn swoop,
half-truths and old-style spelling errors
only partly account for the imbroglio. Little Miss Messala and his skiffle group
doing their best to convince the reporter for the Daily Mirror
(as well as the stringers for Reuters
and Associated Press) they won’t succumb to the Mop Tops. Now the surgeon cocks
an ear to Messala’s chest and checks his pulse
though everywhere the world has missed the beat. That’s why Lonnie Donegan loiters
with the intent of cracking the combination on the lock
and seeing everything fall into place.
‘My aunt Jane, she’s awful smart, she bakes wee rings in an apple tart.’
That’s right, Little Miss, not only has Doctor Graves linked goitre
to a lack of iodine but he keeps on cocking his ear to the atrium of your heart.
The medical team is surveying you as a plough team might reconnoitre
a rolling mead. Try to hang in there. Don’t forget how Jonah
was punished by God because he balked
at being a prophet. Some think the cult of that self-same Pomona
may be glimpsed in the apple tart. The Chiricahua leader, Victorio, has chalked
up so many defeats he’s emerged the clear winner. The day you took the oath
of office was the day you found yourself trammelled.
The fiercely territorial ‘Apache’ goshawk is the same goshawk
(an tseabhach mór) that was sacred to Mars and Apollo both.
As for that most disinformative call about an ‘apple’ being made of ‘enamel’,
it’s been traced to a South Armagh telephone kiosk.
That’s right, Lew, when you installed yourself in the governors’ palace
little did you think you yourself were part of the growth
and graft of empire. It’s pretty clear Messala’s guilty of malice
aforethought at Antioch just as it’s pretty clear our children are still loath
to ascribe scythe-hubbed Ferraris to the Picts. Some see your failure to show at Shiloh
as the impulse behind Ben Hur. Pecs and abs, Lew, abs and pecs.
As for the idea that the bird casting its Lilo
upon the waters might be wearing an anachronistic Rolex,
that’s not so much a blooper
as a timer for an improvised explosive device. The prow of the Havengore
continues to insinuate
itself into our consciousness. Billy the Kid lies in a stupor
while trying to grasp your offer of amnesty. Ben Hourihane is a lion chained to its roar.
Much as a disenfranchised Dungannon man is tied to his Nissen hut.
So it was that the funeral of Winston Churchill would gradually morph
into the funeral of an innocent victim of the paratroopers.
Father Daly. His handkerchief. The innocent victims of the bombing of Canary Wharf.
Two kinds of grass. Regular and super.
One need only tweak the Vari-X a smidgen
to make an adjustment
in windage or elevation. A canary is also a stool pigeon,
of course, someone who sings in an English accent,
the accent reserved for the Romans. The cars in the high-speed chase swap
insults as they cross the border. In the way Ben was asked to rat on his coreligionists
you asked Billy the Kid to turn informant. It’s something like a badge
of honour that our children spare us the details of the undercover cop,
tattooed glipe that he is, tied by his ankles and wrists
and staked out over an anthill in South Armagh by the Chiricahua Apache.
‘And when Halloween comes round, fornenst that tart I’m always found.’
The investigative team is pulling out all the stops
to establish if Mac Grianna’s son committed suicide or drowned.
Because the bass player in the skiffle group has called so many Saturday-night hops
he manages surface tension with the grace of a common water strider.
It’s easy to see how a UVF man posing as a B-Special
became a privileged insider.
Back in 1933, Mac Grianna had wondered if he should render ‘clockwise’ as deiseal,
that being the direction in which a lobster (even one on a tether)
tended to move around a henge.
The British were still celebrating their victory over the Macedonian effetes
while every year at Navan Fort there was a hell-for-leather
chariot race in which redemption still somehow triumphed over revenge.
Now your bird is your wand, Lew. I’m fully aware of that.
I’m well aware that Ben Hourihane was sold cardboard shoes by a shoddy
millionaire from the North. Messala’s hip was cobbled together
from a titanium ball-and-socket. With her bawdy
she thee warshipped, Lew, there in the nether
reaches of the Havengore. I’m also well aware that Judas Iscariot
doesn’t play as big a role in the movie as in the book. As for the shtick
about the railway gauge being the width of a Roman chariot,
it was in Dungannon someone threw the half-brick
that set off the first of a line
of reinings-in of big parades. That’s why it’s pure chance the prefect would dodge
a paver or twice-baked tegula made of Coalisland clay.
That’s right, Lew, pure chance the Mescalero girl to whom you’d taken a shine
would go on to dislodge
just such a tile from the roof of the governors’ palace in Santa Fe.
It was in Barry’s amusement park Ben had first found himself on a ‘3 Abreast Galloper’
and reali
zed there was a fine line
between being bewildered and unfazed. That’s right, Massa Lew, a caliper
isn’t going to work. Lobsters really are a class of sea swine,
given how they grub
about in the shit. According to Sir Winston, such is the integrity of their limestone coral
the white-clawed crayfish love nothing better than to scrub
some data. No better place to start than with the Mescalero girl who refers to moral
turpitude as moral turpentine.
In your chest safe is the very handkerchief a nonplussed
Father Daly waved as a flag of truce on Bloody Sunday. When Pilate lets that hanky fall
it swerves as a morning to those who continue to wine and dine
on Massic and edible dormice, not to speak of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,
for whom this is indeed a wickiup call.
Index of Titles
Anseo
At Least They Weren’t Speaking French
At the Sign of the Black Horse, September 1999
The Birth
Brazil
The Briefcase
Cauliflowers
Christo’s
A Collegelands Catechism
The Coney
Cuba (2)
Cuba
Cuthbert and the Otters
Dancers at the Moy
Dirty Data
Duffy’s Circus
Errata
Footling
The Fox
The Frog
Gathering Mushrooms
Good Friday, 1971. Driving Westward
A Hare at Aldergrove
Hay
Hedgehog
The Humours of Hakone
Incantata
It Is What It Is
The Key
Lag
Lateral
The Loaf
Long Finish
Loss of Separation: A Companion
Ma
Medley for Morin Khur
Meeting the British
The Mixed Marriage
The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants
Moy Sand and Gravel
Mules
Ned Skinner
The Old Country
The Panther
Pelt
Quail
Quoof
Redknots
Saffron
The Sightseers
The Soap-Pig
The Sonogram
Symposium
Tea
Truce
Turkey Buzzards
The Weepies
Why Brownlee Left
Wind and Tree
The Year of the Sloes, for Ishi
ALSO BY PAUL MULDOON
POETRY
