MORE ON PAUL MULDOON

Born in Armagh, known as "bandit country" during "The Troubles" it would surely be hard for any resident poet not find the conflict represented in his or her work. Here is one of PM's which illustrates how the ordinary may have a more sinister meaning in the context of Ulster.

Since 1987 PM has lived and worked in the USA where he is the Howard G B Clark Professor at Princeton University. In 2007 he was appointed the poetry editor of The New Yorker. He is a fellow Hertford College at the University of Oxford.

IRELAND By Paul Muldoon

The Volkswagen parked in the gap,

But gently ticking over.

You wonder if it's lovers

And not men hurrying back

Across two fields and a river.

Charting difference and the need for identity:

THE BOUNDARY COMMISSION By Paul Muldoon

You remember that village where the border ran

Down the middle of the street,

With the butcher and the baker in different states?

Today he remarked how a shower of rain

Had stopped so cleanly across Golightly's lane

It might have been a wall of glass

That had toppled over. He stood there, for ages,

To wonder which side, if any, he should be on.