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Like the whorl of an out-of-this-world ear that had been lent

to an oak-gall wasp by a tenth century Irish monk

who would hold out oak-gall ink against the predicament

in which he found himself…

Like the ever-unfolding trunk

of the elephant in the room that gives such a bad vibe

it vies with your old hippie girlfriend who once lent such weight

to any argument to which you feared she might subscribe,

including her insistence we abbreviate

our most promising rlshps…

Like the scrolled-down tail

of a Capuchin monkey drawing on its inner strengths

as it hammers short-sighted snail against short-sighted snail

that has nonetheless gone to extraordinary lengths…

Like the tapeworm swallowed by a hippie who was once fat

but is now kind of bummed out you've lost track of where she's at.

Special permission has been granted by the author for Design Observer to reprint this poem online. Originally published in The New Republic.

Comments (4) | JUMP TO MOST RECENT COMMENT >>

See also: http://ampersand.gosedesign.net/richard-wilbur/

Zachary Sachs
10.04.09 at 09:30

wuihh... simple but large....nice

yon ade
10.05.09 at 12:50

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Muldoon was in born in Northern Ireland and educated at the Queen's University of Belfast. Since 1987 he has lived in the United States, where he is a Professor at Princeton University. In 2007 he was appointed Poetry Editor of The New Yorker. His most recent book is Horse Latitudes: Poems.

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