layered quality under the surface.' It would be hard to improve on that last sentence as a description of Muldoon's own mature style, the expression of an omnivorous imagination that?in 'Milkweed and Monarch,' for example?mixes his parents' Collegelands grave with other geographically scattered memories into a kaleidoscopic pattern that is at once moving, musically satisfying, and a brilliant postmodern variation on the ancient poetic form of villanelle (with the repetition of its first and third lines).
Meeting the British
We met the British in the dead of winter. Th e sky was lavender
and the snow lavender-blue. I could hear, far below,
5 the sound of two streams coming together (both were frozen over)
and, no less strange, myself calling out in French
across that forest10 clearing. Neither General Jeffrey Amherst 1
nor Colonel Henry Bouquet could stomach our willow-tobacco.
As for the unusual scent whe n the Colonel shook out his hand-
I. Commander-in-chief of British forces in the French and Indian Wa r (1754?63); fought against France and its Native American allies. During Pontiac's Rebellion (1763-64), led by Ottawa chief Pontiac in the Great Lakes region, Amherst wrote to the British officer Colonel Bouquet, 'Could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians?' Bouquet replied, 'I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself,' to which Amherst responded, 'You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execreble Race.' Apparently as a result of this and similar plans of other British officers, many Native Americans in the area, never having been exposed to smallpox, were killed by the disease in 1763?64. Pontiac concluded a peace treaty with the British in July 1766.
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287 0 / PAUL MULDOON
kerchief: C'est la lavande, une fleur mauve comme le del.2
They gave us six fishhooks and two blankets embroidered with smallpox.
Gathering Mushrooms
Th e 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.
5 The mushroom shed is windowless, wide, its high-stacked wooden trays hosed down with formaldehyde.1 An d my father has opened the Gates of Troy2 to that first load of horse manure.
10 Barley straw. Gypsum.3 Dried blood. Ammonia.
Wago n after wagon blusters in, a self-renewing gold-black dragon we push to the back of the mind. We have taken our pitchforks to the wind.
15 All brought back to me that September evening fifteen years on. Th e pair of us tripping through Barnett's fair demesne0 domain like girls in long dresses after a hail-storm.
20 We might have been thinking of the fire-bomb that sent Malone House4 sky-high and its priceless collection of linen sky-high. We might have wept with Elizabeth McCrum .
25 We were thinking only of psilocybin.3 You sang of the maid you met on the dewy grass?
And she stooped so low gave me to know it was mushrooms she was gathering O.
He'll be wearing that same old donkey-jacket6
30 and the sawn-off waders. He carries a knife, two punnets,7 a bucket. He reaches far into his own shadow. We'll have taken him unawares and stand behind him, slightly to one side.
2. It is lavender, a flower purple as the sky ter of Paris. (French). 4. A mansion in Barnett Demesne, Belfast, 1. Formic-acid disinfectant. bombed in 1976. 2. City besieged by the Greeks in Homer's Iliad. 5. Hallucinogenic drug made from mushrooms. Its walls could not be destroyed from without, and 6. Strong jacket with leather shoulder patches. it was finally captured only by a trick. 7. Small shallow baskets for fruit or vegetables. 3. Hydrated calcium sulfate, used for making plas
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MILKWEE D AN D MONARC H / 287 1 35 He is one of those ancient warriors 40before the rising tide. He'll glance back from under his peaked cap without breaking rhythm: his coaxing a mushroom? a flat or a cup ? the nick against his right thumb; the bucket then, the punnet to left or right, and so on and so forth till kingdom come. 4550We followed the overgrown tow-path by the Lagan.8 Th e sunset would deepen through cinnamon to aubergine, the wood-pigeon's concerto for oboe and strings, allegro, blowing your mind. An d you were suddenly out of my ken, hurtling towards the ever-receding ground, into the ma w 55of a shimmering green-gold dragon. You discovered yourself in some outbuilding with your long-lost companion, me, though my head had grown into the head of a that shook its dirty-fair mane and spoke this verse: horse 606570Come back to us. However cold and raw, your feet were always meant to negotiate terms with bare cement. Beyond this concrete wall is a wall of concrete and barbed wire. Your only hope is to come back. If sing you must, let your song tell of treading your own dung, let straw and dung give a spring to your step. If we never live to see the day we leap into our true domain, lie down with us now and wrap yourself in the soiled grey blanket of Irish rain that will, one day, bleach itself white. Lie down with us and wait. 1983 Milkweed and Monarch As he knelt by the grave of his mother andthe taste of dill, or tarragon? he could barely tell one from the other? father 5filled his mouth. It seemed as if he might Wh y should he be stricken with grief, not for his mother and father, smother. 8. Mai n river in Belfast.
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2872 / PAUL MULDOON
but a woman slinking from the fur of a sea-otter in Portland, Maine, or, yes, Portland, Oregon ? he could barely tell one from the other?
