Only now do we see how each crossroads
was bound to throw up not just a cross
but a couple of gadabouts with goads,
a couple of gadabouts at a loss
as to why they were at the beck and call
of some old crock soaring above the culch
of a kitchen midden at evenfall,
some old crock roaring across the gulch
as a hanged man roars out to a hanged man.
Now bucket nods to bucket of the span
of an ash yoke, or something of that ilk…
Now one hanged man kicks at the end of his rope
in another little attack of hope.
Now a frog in one bucket thickens the milk.
II
Now a frog in one bucket thickens the milk
as it tries out for the sublime
from chime to birch-wood chime,
a frog thrown in with no more thought as to whilk
way he was geen
from the hussy turned resourceful housewife
than she gave to where in Ayreshire or Fife
her beloved spalpeen
might fetch up as a tatie-hoker,
a tatie-hoker revealing a lining of red tatted silk
to his sack-cloth, so to speak,
just as it’s revealed our stockbroker
is creaming off five hundred a week
while the frog in one bucket thickens the milk.
III
Now a frog in one bucket thickens the milk
as a heart might quicken behind its stave
at the thought of a thief who bilked
us of our life savings himself being saved.
Only now do we see… How spasm and lull
are mirrored somewhat by lull and spasm
when the nitwit roars out to the numbskull
thinking he might yet narrow the chasm
between his own cask and the other’s keg,
thinking he might take the other down a peg
if not leave him completely in the lurch…
Leave him to ponder if it’s less an ash
yoke tipped by his bucket of balderdash,
less an ash yoke than a cross-bar of birch.
IV
Less an ash yoke than a cross-bar of birch
from the single birch that insinuated itself into the grove
of oaks sacred to Jove
and took him in as from his perch
the nincompoop who’s churning our account
took in the other knucklehead
with the proposal that our aversion to being bled
is pretty much tantamount
to the old crock being averse to paying his ransom,
the bucket where you would search
for the significance of a frog taking the plunge
proving to be less cask than keg, the transom
from which the old crock offered his vinegar-sponge
less an ask yoke than a cross-bar of birch.
V
Less an ash yoke than a cross-bar of birch
and a birch-wood bucket where a frog breasts
the very milk we feared it would besmirch.
Only now do we see we’re at the behest
not of some old crock kicking the beam
but ourselves. We balk at the idea, balk
at the idea of a frog no sooner opening a seam
in milk than it’s… Surely not caulked?
Only now do we see how it’s ourselves who skim
determinedly through the dim
of evenfall with no more regard for our load
as we glance up through the sky-hoop
than the ninny who roars back to the nincompoop,
“Only now do we see how each crossroads…”
Paul Muldoon
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