Jean Paul Montanaro / Pexels

Holy Thursday

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, 

And settles himself at the next table but one. 

We know, you and I, that it’s over, 

That something or other has come between 

Us, whatever we are, or were. 

The waiter swabs his plate with bread 

And drains what’s left of his wine, 

Then rearranges, one by one, 

The knife, the fork, the spoon, the napkin, 

The table itself, the chair he’s simply borrowed, 

And smiles, and bows to his own absence.

Hedgehog

The snail moves like a 

Hovercraft, held up by a 

Rubber cushion of itself, 

Sharing its secret 

With the hedgehog. The hedgehog 

Shares its secret with no one. 

We say, Hedgehog, come out 

Of yourself and we will love you. 

We mean no harm. We want 

Only to listen to what 

You have to say. We want 

Your answers to our questions. 

The hedgehog gives nothing 

Away, keeping itself to itself. 

We wonder what a hedgehog 

Has to hide, why it so distrusts. 

We forget the god 

under this crown of thorns. 

We forget that never again 

will a god trust in the world. 

The Frog

Comes to mind as another small 

upheaval 

amongst the rubble. 

His eye matches exactly the bubble 

in my spirit-level. 

I set aside hammer and chisel 

and take him on the trowel. 

The entire population of Ireland 

springs from a pair left to stand 

overnight in a pond 

in the gardens of Trinity College, 

two bottles of wine left there to chill 

after the Act of Union. 

There is, surely, in this story 

a moral. A moral for our times. 

What if I put him to my head 

and squeezed it out of him, 

like the juice of freshly squeezed limes, 

or a lemon sorbet?

Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon (b. June 20, 1951) is an Irish poet who has published more than 30 books of poetry. He held the position of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 to 2004 and served as poetry editor at The New Yorker from 2007 to 2017. Muldoon’s poetry is characterized by a sly, often difficult allusive style. He regularly makes use of obscure or archaic words, and exhibits an expert handling of meter and rhyme. His work is often compared to fellow-Northern Irish poet, the late Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), who was both a friend and mentor.