Paul Muldoon > Quotes

“Why Brownlee left, and where he went,
Is a mystery even now.
For if a man should have been content
It was him; two acres of barley,
One of potatoes, four bullocks,
A milker, a slated farmhouse.
He was last seen going out to plough
On a March morning, bright and early.

By noon Brownlee was famous;
They had found all abandoned, with
The last rig unbroken, his pair of black
Horses, like man and wife,
Shifting their weight from foot to
Foot, and gazing into the future.”
― Paul Muldoon

“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.”
― Paul Muldoon

“It's Never Too Late for Rock'N'Roll

It may be too late to learn ancient Greek
Under a canopy of gnats
It may be too late to sail to Mozambique
With a psychotic cat
It may be too late to find a cure
Too late to save your soul

It may be too late to lose the heat
It may be too late to find your feet
It may be too late to draw a map
To the high desert of your heart
It may be too late to lose the poor
It’s never too late for rock’n’roll

It may be too late to dance like Fred Astaire
Or Michael Jackson come to that
It may be too late to climb the stair
And find the key under your mat
It may be too late to think that you’re
Never too late for rock’n’roll

We have to believe a couple of good thieves can still seize the day
We have to believe we can still clear the way
We have to believe we’ve found some common ground
We have to believe we have to believe
We can lose those last twenty pounds”
― Paul Muldoon

“I who have been at the mercy of the cider-press / have also been known to trifle / with the affections of a dryad in a sacred grove, / a judge’s daughter and a between-maid to Lord Mountbatten / among others from beyond my clan”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour: Poems

“our lietenants knew those splotches in the rafters / were splotches of gangrene and gore / and opportunity was “rife” rather than “ripe.” / The rank and file had fallen silent / since we’d held out the idea of heaver or the hereafter.”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour: Poems

“The spirit of those men of steel, / their gray-eyed wives and daughters”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour: Poems

“On Sackville Street, a girl who seemed to be about to choke coughed up something from her very core. / She wipes her mouth on her jute cloak / and reloads her father’s four-bore. / The sky is full of coal dust.”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour: Poems

“Short, narrow streets run far and wide / as if they were homesick.”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour: Poems

“Leave your jewels in the bank,” / the Countess told the girls. “The only thing worth / wearing’s a revolver.” It seems she shot one officer point-blank. / The whole world’s foundering. A smoke trail tells / of the fates of Caesar, Alexander. Those who kissed their hems. / Tara’s plowed under. Troy eventually fell. / Surely the English will get what’s coming to them?”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour: Poems

“The wind’s heavy with soot. / Alexander and Caesar. All their retinue. / We’ve seen Tara buried in grass, Troy trampled underfoot. / The English? Their days are numbered too.”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour

“This, then, is the beast that has never actually been:
not having seen one, they prized in any case
its perfect poise, its throat, the straightforward gaze it gave them back—so straightforward, so serene.

Since it had never been, it was all the more
unsullied. And they allowed it such latitude
that, in a clearing in the wood,
it raised its head as if its essence shrugged off mere

existence. They brought it on, not with oats or corn,
but with the chance, however slight,
that it would come on its own. This gave it such strength

that from its brow there sprang a horn. A single horn.
Only when it met a maiden’s white with white
Would it be bodied out in her, in her mirror’s full length.”
― Paul Muldoon, Hay

“Our painters, too, have seen the light / where water meets the sky / Cadmium red. Titanium white. / How often have they vied / for supremacy in the air?”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour

“The belt / worn by a Benedictine was made of leather / but a Franciscan's cincture was rope. The gaudy sleeve / I once put on is fraying by the hour.”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour

“Those who can’t afford a uniform may wear a blue armband / from which the meadow pipit filches a single strand / to bind its nest. The rest of us are bound / by honor alone.”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour: Poems

“Now we’re known less for snipers’ nests / than nests of singing birds”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour

“and bacon rind they’ve set in store / against our winter wants”
― Paul Muldoon, Frolic and Detour: Poems