September 19: Saint Marty's Day Decorations, Paul Muldoon, "The Birth"

Well, it's time to go up into the attic and drag out your Saint Marty's Day decorations.  In fifteen days, it will be Saint Marty's Day Eve, when children go to bed, dreaming of tapioca pudding.

So, tonight, put up your Saint Marty's Day tree.  Make some Saint Marty's Day cookies.  Maybe watch a couple Saint Marty's Day TV specials, like "A Charlie Brown Saint Marty's Day" and "How the Grinch Stole Saint Marty's Day."

And now, a poem in honor of Saint Marty's Day . . .

The Birth

by:  Paul Muldoon

Seven o'clock. The seventh day of the seventh month of the year.
No sooner have I got myself up in lime-green scrubs,
a sterile cap and mask,
and taken my place at the head of the table

than the windlass-woman ply their shears
and gralloch-grub
for a footling foot, then, warming to their task,
haul into the inestimable

realm of apple-blossoms and chanterelles and damsons and eel-spears
and foxes and the general hubbub
of inkies and jennets and Kickapoos with their lemniscs
or peekaboo-quiffs of Russian sable

and tallow-unctuous vernix, into the realm of the widgeon—
the 'whew' or 'yellow-poll', not the 'zuizin'—

Dorothy Aoife Korelitz Muldoon: I watch through floods of tears
as they give her a quick rub-a-dub
and whisk
her off to the nursery, then check their staple-guns for staples