Two by Paul Muldoon

Beijing

I could still hear the musicians

cajoling those thousands of clay

horses and horsemen through the squeeze

when I woke beside Carlotta.

Life-size, also. Also terra-cotta.

The sky was still a terra-cotta frieze

over which her grandfather still held sway

with the set square, fretsaw, stencil,

plumb line, and carpenter's pencil

his grandfather brought from Roma.

Proud-fleshed Carlotta. Hypersarcoma.

For now our highest ambition

was simply to bear the light of the day

we had once been planning to seize.

Bob Dylan at Princeton, November 2000

We cluster at one end, one end of Dillon Gym.

"You know what, honey? We call that a homonym."

We cluster at one end, one end of Dillon Gym.

"If it's fruit you're after, you go out on a limb."

The last time in Princeton, that ornery degree,

those seventeen-year locusts hanging off the trees.

That last time in Princeton, that ornery degree,

his absolute refusal to bend the knee.

His last time in Princeton, he wouldn't wear a hood.

Now he's dressed up as some sort of cowboy dude.

That last time in Princeton, he wouldn't wear a hood.

"You know what, honey? We call that disquietude.

It's that self-same impulse that has him rearrange

both 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' and 'Things Have Changed'

so that everything seems to fall within his range

as the locusts lock in on grain silo and grange."