The mountain is holding out
for news from the sea
of the raid on the redoubt.
The plain won’t level with me
for news from the sea
is harder and harder to find.
The plain won’t level with me
now it’s non-aligned
and harder and harder to find.
The forest won’t fill me in
now it, too, is non-aligned
and its patience wearing thin.
The forest won’t fill me in
nor the lake confess
to its patience wearing thin.
I’d no more try to guess
why the lake might confess
to a regard for its own sheen,
no more try to guess
why the river won’t come clean
on its regard for its own sheen
than why you and I’ve faced off across a ditch.
For the river not coming clean
is only one of the issues on which
you and I’ve faced off across a ditch
and the raid on the redoubt
only one of the issues on which
the mountain is holding out.
Paul Muldoon was born in 1951 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, and educated in Armagh and at the Queen’s University of Belfast. Since 1987 he has lived in the United States, where he is now Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor at Princeton University and Chair of the University Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. Paul Muldoon’s main collections of poetry are New Weather (1973), Mules (1977), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting The British (1987), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), The Annals of Chile (1994), Hay (1998), Poems 1968-1998 (2001) and Moy Sand and Gravel (2002), for which he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. His tenth collection, Horse Latitudes, appeared in the fall of 2006. [http://www.paulmuldoon.net]
PPL's Poetry Podcast Blog 
What a wonderful reading of a beautifully rendered pantoum. I could listen to this over and over again… in fact, I have!