As I was going up the hill,
  I met with Jack the piper;
And all the tune that he could play
  Was, 'Tie up your petticoats tighter'.

I tied them once, I tied them twice,
  I tied them three times over;
And all the song that he could sing
  Was, 'Carry me safe to Dover'.

condominium

nothing today

in my mind I traverse the trudgsome sand
between

Congleton bears and viragos
from the city

hearthstone

how about this
was purple once oh aye
as far as you could see

and came the trencher
to cut off the man there
and thus his widow
wept

so there he could see before me

pastourelle

not too hideously he too soon
for the neatness of his record

the bombinating quincunx

April of a June May
and the wind raucous
and the frogs' caucus
a-lee of the bay

cold questing of it then
bitter if later another
chapiter of some other
sequence bravely Wen

abandoned etc. forsook
and all his enemies
fervently like anomies
dispiriting or Hook

or Cook the travels long
and the breadfruits water-cast
received at last
at the mouth of a billabong

as a rainy gulch hot-dries
to fennel of lewd properties
among the eucalyptus trees
full of bums and butterflies

this discourse of a Sunday ale
tetchy beside the waters
like unto the daughters
gathering sand in a pail

before we leave the blue sky
sundogging in one corner
sit we down like Little Jack Horner
for the plum o' the pie

wherefore does the orchard garner
strength in winter
or the tinter
pixilate the brothers Warner?

for that the crashing sea
may not know and gloat
to hear its single note
under the tempest's fury

to Sidney Lanier

not much the watergroves are now or have they
kept the pace with us as you might say

park it son we said and they would quake
now it's all old-timers where do you think you are?

---

Christopher Mulrooney has written poems and translations in Transverse, Stonestone, Qwerty, Burning Leaf, Default, and Voices Israel, criticism in Parameter, The Film Journal, and Pyramid, and a volume of verse, notebook and sheaves (AmErica House, 2002).

---

PREVIOUS WORK

"BROKEN CURFEW" by Antonios Maltezos

"THIS IS THE END" by Brendan Proce

"FOR THE RECORD" by Iain Deans

"GO AHEAD" by Michael Steeves

"THE OTHER MR. KAFKA" by Philip Quinn

ARCHIVES

HOME