Selected Poems (1968-2014)

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