Friday Poetry Blogging: Paul Muldoon

I knew nothing about Paul Muldoon when I ran across this poem in an anthology (I said I wasn't a poetry person, right?). I have been using it in classes ever since. It's fantastic: brief, but so packed full of meaning and so meticulously crafted that I usually spend at least an entire hour unpacking it with my students.

The Lass of Aughrim

On a tributary of the Amazon
an Indian boy
steps out of the forest
and strikes up on a flute.

Imagine my delight
when we cut the outboard motor
and I recognize the strains
of The Lass of Aughrim.

'He hopes,' Jesus explains,
'to charm
fish from the water

on what was the tibia
of a priest
from a long-abandoned Mission.'