Paul Muldoon Poems

The rain comes flapping through the yard
like a tablecloth that she hand-embroidered.
My mother has left it on the line.
It is sodden with rain.
...

As he knelt by the grave of his mother and father
the taste of dill, or tarragon-
he could barely tell one from the other-
...

The snail moves like a
Hovercraft, held up by a
Rubber cushion of itself,
Sharing its secret
...

Comes to mind as another small
upheaval
amongst the rubble.
His eye matches exactly the bubble
...

I gave you back my claim on the mining town
and the rich vein we once worked,
the tumble down
from a sluice box that irked
...

The height of one stall at odds with the next in your grandfather's byre
where cattle allowed themselves to speak only at Yule
gave but little sense of why you taught us to admire
the capacity of a three-legged stool
...

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,
...

A game about which we've got next to nothing straight,
it seems to have been a mash-up of buzkashi and road bowls.
As I try to anticipate a spear-thrower trying to anticipate
...

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,
...

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.
...