Tell - Paul Muldoon

He opens the scullery door, and with a sudden rush
of wind, as raw as raw,
brushes past him as he himself will brush
past the stacks of straw

that stood in earlier for Crow
or Comanche tepees hung with scalps
but tonight pass muster, row upon row,
for the foothills of the Alps.

He opens the door of the peeling shed
just as some of the apple peelers ---
one of almost a score
of red-cheeked men who pare

and core
the red-cheeked apples for a few spare
shillings --- mutters something about "bloodshed"
and the "peelers."

The red-cheeked men put down their knives
at one and the same
moment. All but his father, who somehow connives
to close one eye as if taking aim

or holding back a tear,
and shoots him a glance
he might take, as it whizzes past his ear,
for another Crow, or Comanche, lance

hurled through the Tilley-lit
gloom of the peeling shed,
were he not to hear what must be an apple split
above his head.



From Moy Sand And Gravel: Poems by Paul Muldoon.