Selected poems from "Moy Sand and Gravel" (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 2002)
by Paul Muldoon
winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for poetry
The Howard Clark '21 University Professor in the Humanities at Princeton,
professor in the Council of the Humanities and creative writing and chair
of the Fund for Irish Studies
Pineapples and Pomegranates
In Memory of Yehuda Amichai
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 willpower, knowing in my bones
that it stood for something other than itself alone
while having absolutely no sense
of its being a worldwide symbol of munificence.
Munificence—right? Not munitions, if you understand
where I'm coming from. As if the open hand
might, for once, put paid
to the hand grenade
in one corner of the planet.
I'm talking about pineapples—right?—not pomegranates.
A Collegelands Catechism
Which is known as the "Orchard County"?
Which as the "Garden State"?
Which captain of the Bounty
was set adrift by his mate?
Who cooked and ate an omelette
midway across Niagara Falls?
Where did Setanta get
those magical hurley balls
he ram-stammed down the throat
of the blacksmith's hound?
Why would a Greek philosopher of note
refuse to be bound
by convention but live in a tub
from which he might overhear,
as he went to rub
an apple on his sleeve, the mutineers
plotting to seize the Maid of the Mist
while it was still half able to forge
ahead and make half a fist
of crossing the Niagara gorge,
the tub in which he might light a stove
and fold the beaten
eggs into themselves? Who unearthed the egg-trove?
And who, having eaten
the omelette, would marvel at how the Mounties
had so quickly closed in on him, late
of the "Orchard County"
by way of the "Garden State"?
One Last Draw of the Pipe
Heard a piece of Roscommon folklore the other night.
At some village or other, they lay pipes full of tobacco on the graves
of the new buried in case they may like a draw of the pipe. A wild American
indian kind of buisness [sic] it seems.
--A
letter from W. B. Yeats to Douglas Hyde, October 1889
Even though it happened as long ago as the late fifties, I could still
draw
you a picture of the place. A little draw
through which we were helping a neighbor draw
green hay when we would suddenly draw
level with a freshly dug hole. He must have been torn between one last
draw
of the pipe and hurriedly trying to draw
a veil of thatch and pine boughs over the hole before having to withdraw,
that ghost who may even now draw
a bead on me. On the day Sitting Bull was shot, his old trick pony (once
such
a draw
in Buffalo Bill's circus because he was given to dance
attendance
when he heard a volley of shots) would automatically draw
himself up and raise one hoof.
Even now I hear it coming down. I hear it coming down on my yew-bough
roof.
Poems on this page are protected by copyright, © 2002 by Paul Muldoon. All rights reserved.
A news release is available at http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/03/q2/0407-muldoon.htm.
More information on Paul Muldoon is available at http://www.princeton.edu/~visarts/Paul1.htm.
Muldoon maintains a personal Web site at http://www.paulmuldoon.net/
on which he reads selections of his work.