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  • A Tortoise
  • Paul Muldoon (bio)

Try telling a dramatist the sky’s the limitwhen an eagle has let fall a tortoise onto his bare skull.Now Aeschylus will expirewithout the opportunity to develop his skillin single combat

or master basic hero-feats.However emotionally detached,a tortoise had it within it to be the sound box of a lyreimprovised by my friend, Joseph, in a last-ditcheffort to rise above the Gulag.

Given the Portuguese regained the fortress at Almeidaafter the Treaty of Parisit’s clear not every outcome is dire.That’s why, though the tortoise pretends to browsethe chessboard, its every move’s a gambit.

A tortoise will put its best footforward on the baizeand strike out across a scum-covered quagmirewith all the poiseof a high-functioning alcoholic. [End Page 579]

Yet this same tortoise has covered its ass with its helmetlike a gruntin a helicopter-gunship coming under firefrom that contested groundnear the border of Vietnam and Cambodia. [End Page 580]

Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon is the author of twelve collections of poetry. A thirteenth, Frolic and Detour, will be published by FSG in October.

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