From The Times Literary Supplement
May 7, 2008
A new poem by Paul Muldoon
When the Pie Was Opened
I
Every morning the water again runs clear
as it has for twenty years
of jabs
and stabs
where we’ve joined in single combat, my dear,
on a strand or at a ford.
Every evening I’ve fleshed my sword
in a scabbard.
The hedgehog bristling on your tabard.
Behind each of us is arrayed a horde
of heroes ready to vie
for a piece of the pie
with Hector, Ajax, Ferdia, Cu Chulainn,
and all the other squeaky-clean
champions who’ve once more forgotten to die.
II
Forgotten to die like the cancer cells
in their pell-mell
through an escutcheon-fesse.
The hot compress
on a pustule from which the pus wells
as it welled for Job.
Every evening the impulse to disrobe
and take a little potsherd
to scrape the skin off whatever we’ve butchered.
Was there really a probe
into whether or not you would stand the test
of taking a hedgehog for your crest?
As if you might gather
yourself about a core
of high explosives packed into a vest.
III
A vest opened now like a dossier.
A badger with a white line running all the way
back from its snout.
Would that the world were indeed to be broken out
of its crust like a hedgehog baked in clay
by gypsies at the end of a lane.
Would that it were to hang from a crane.
The steam rising through a slash
where we’ve made a hash
of the whole thing. As for the bloodstain
on the cross-arm,
somebody told me vinegar works a charm.
Lifts off the whole kit
and caboodle like a pheasant at last making good
its escape from a pheasant farm.
IV
A pheasant farm where we watched a pheasant’s ascent
translate into a dent
on our automobile. Wham.
I bet they could make out even on the jam-cam
steam rising from the vent
of a wound dressed with sphagnum moss.
Bosom-boss.
The white line running all the way from the badger
to the gamekeeper-turned-poacher
who really couldn’t give a toss
about having to share
her champion’s portion of Brie or Camembert.
The minor obsession with glitz
from a major klutz
who’s found herself enmeshed in a snare.
V
A snare in which we find ourselves enmeshed
as every evening our swords are fleshed
while Hector and Ajax
apply flax
and white of eggs. The page is refreshed,
my dear, only as our servants bind
our wounds. A rind
closing over the Camembert or Brie
in some fancy hostelry
where we’ve wined and dined
in anticipation of putting on our gear
and steeling ourselves for the belly-spear.
The shit-storm
through a bloody stream
in which every morning the water again runs clear.
“When the Pie Was Opened” is the title poem of Paul Muldoon’s new collection, published by Sylph Editions and the American University of Paris .
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