Following is a transcript of the podcast video I made reading this poem by Paul Muldoon and then discussing its meaning and significance.
G'day everybody, welcome back to my series on random poems. So I've chosen a book of poems from my collection. This is Paul Muldoon, Selected Poems 1968 to 2014.
And as you can, as you might be able to guess from his name, well you wouldn't be able to guess, but he's Irish. Certainly you could guess that he's of Irish heritage. And let's just read a little bit from the inner jacket here.
Paul Muldoon's Selected Poems 1968 to 2014 presents 45 years of work drawn from 12 collections by a poet who began as a prodigy and has gone on to become a virtuoso. Says Michael Hoffman. Hailed by Seamus Heaney, that was the last poet I read, as one of the era's true originals, Muldoon seems almost to defy definition in his work.
Nevertheless, this selection, chosen by the poet himself, will serve new readers as an indispensable introduction to his trademark combination of intellectual hijinks and emotional honesty. And for those readers already familiar with his work, the volume provides a panoramic glance across the meteoric career of a poet who performs high above the regular traffic of poetry, Sunday Times. So I opened it up to this poem, and it's a rather long poem, but you know, as per the rules, that's the poem that I opened up to.
So I'm going to read the entire poem, and it's called “At the Sign of the Black Horse, September 1999.”[the formatting of the poem below is different from the original, and some words may be spelled differently due to the transcription. For all purposes academic or otherwise, please look up the original poem]
Awesome the morning after Hurricane Floyd to sit out in our driveway and gawk at yet another canoe or kayak coming down Canal Road, now under 10 feet of water. We've wheeled to the brim of the old Biltright pram in which, wrapped in a shawl of Carrick macross, lace, and a bonnet of his great-grandmother Sophie's finest needlepoint, Asher sleeps on, as likely as any of us to find a way across, the mill race on which logs, trees more than logs, are borne along, to which the houses down by the old Griggstown locks have given up their inventory.
I'm happy for once to be left high and dry, happy that the house I may yet bring myself to call mine is set on a 250-year-old slab, happy that, if need be, we might bundle a few belongings into a pillow slip and climb the hill and escape. Please examine your change to a place where the soul might indeed recover radical innocence. A police launch maneuvering by brought-back troops on maneuver.
Some child kin of my children dipping a stale crust in his bowl of kale while listening to his parents complain about the cost of running a household. In the Poland of the 1930s, the child who, please hold, a peaked cap would shortly accost for the whereabouts of his uncle, the sofa. Awesome, however stormy yesterday's weather, to calmly don a safari hat that somewhat matches my safari coat, and determine, as I am, to make the most of the power cut here on Ararat.
Tear another leaf from Edward Bulliard Lytton's King Poppy to light the barbecue. The barbecue, shortly to be laden with Dorothy's favorite medallions of young rat and white-lipped peccary taken this morning, not with old-fashioned piano wire but the latest in traps, I'll rake the ashes of the fire on which they'll cook, no turn on red, and watch the Mediterranean do its level best to meet the caribon, as Dorothy pronounced it once, on Canal Road, no way out, having taken down from the attic the ancient underwood with the one remaining black ribbon, and set up a shop in a corner of the garage. When we wheeled the old biltrite baby carriage to the brink this morning, I was awestruck to see in Asher's glabrous face a slew of interlopers, not from Magary, as I might have expected, or Magara, or Magarafelt, though my connections there are now few and far between, but the likes of that kale-eating child on whom the peaked cap verboten would shortly pin a star of yellow felt, having accosted him on the mosaic, proscription, please secure your own oxygen mask before attending to children, on the eating of white-lipped peccary.
Just one step ahead of the police launch, meanwhile, a 1920 Studebaker had come down Canal Road, do not fill above this line, carrying another relative, Arnold Rothstein, the brain behind the running during prohibition of grain alcohol into the states, his shirt the very same day-glo green of chlorophyll. On the surface of a cattle bath, or the canal itself, the canal that ordinarily reflects berm, bank, and towpath, as calm as calm, Gene had been fixing Asher a little gruel from leftover cereal and crumbled zwieback. When Uncle Arnie came floating by the nursery, there was Arnold Rothstein, who had himself fixed the 1919 World Series by bribing eight Chicago White Sox players, keep back 50 feet, to throw the game.
So awestruck were we by his day-glo shirt, we barely noticed how low in the water his Studebaker lay. The distribution of its cargo of grain alcohol, filtered through a makeshift charcoal-packed double downspout by an accomplice, Waxy Gordon, somewhat less than even. The peccary's hind foot, the pinked cap would inquire, you call that cloven? Asher slept on, his little pout set off beautifully by the pillowcase, into which we might yet bundle the foul madams, the couscous, the tabouleh carry-out, full of grit from the Sahara.
Well, Uncle Arnie had taken his lawyer's advice, maintaining that he paid none of the eight White Sox, who stood in the witness box as much as a nickel. Racketeering maybe, extortion maybe, maybe vice. But not throwing games, it wasn't an area in which he had expertise, not an expert.
Isaac Wolfe of New Haven, meanwhile, had unzippered a freezer bag and made a dent in the defrosted dough in which we'd meant, to wrap the loin of peccary, please use tongs, in an Aussie version of the secret recipe the Duke of Wellington had secured, from the kilidar of Perinda, one which substituted quantongs for apricots. Well, Asher slept on, half-hid, under the cradle hood, his great-grandfather Jim Zabin, an adman who held, of all things, the Biltright account, please examine your change, as mistakes cannot, nodded from his deathbed to the red stain on the muslin cloth that covered the peccary in its autoclave, as if that cloth were an obstacle whereby the haystack and roof-leveling wind bred. On the Atlantic might at last be stayed, by which authority another great-grandfather, Sam Corlitz, would blast from his hardware store in Lawrence, Mass.
Did you deny Asher a bris? A chainsaw had let rip, our next-door neighbor Bruce was making quite a hand of amputating a sycamore limb that had given its all to the wind and rain. Asher slept on, his shawl of caric macross lace, his bonnet tied with silk reputed to come from Samarkand. While Dorothy stood where the Delaware and Raritan Canal and the Millstone River, combined to carry ton upon ton of clay, hay, hair, shoes, spectacles, please use the hammer to break the glass, playing ducks and drakes, with the child kin shortly to be riven from her family and I, the so-called Goy from the Moy, scrubbed the trap made in Marengo, Illinois, by which we took that white-lipped peccary as if scrubbing might leave me shriven, a flicker from behind Asher's sleeping lids, all covered with little wheels and welks, as Jean's distant cousin Helen Hanf began to rub a mix of cumin and baby talc, cornstarch more than talc, into another loin of peccary.
This being a trick, Helene had picked up from the individual who started a trend by keeping a rabbit worn, come dovecoat in a muse off Charing Cross Road. Hard hats must be worn, an individual who picked up from whichever wha deemed a pram in the hallway the end. Of art, a wha who could no doubt trace it back to Wellington and the Killadhar of Perinda.
I looked up in dismay as the helter-skelter I'd raised in lieu of a lonely tower, part-floating Derek, was nudged by the millrace. The increasingly eccentric Helene, meanwhile, continued to rub cornstarch into the remains of whatever curled in the autoclave, almost inaudible now. The sycamore moans as, almost inaudibly, I myself continue to scrub the latest in traps with a wire brush.
From Sam's hardware store in Lawrence, Mass., you ignore the midrash. By which authority? I could hear small incendiary devices going off in the midst of the pleasantries, exchanged at this as every family gathering. Please do not leave window ajar, where the stricken face of Uncle Arnie's friend, Fanny Bryce, peaked from her astracan.
According to Horace, Arnie maintained, every water pitcher started out as a wine jar. You may take Fanny for a nincompoop, but I fear she may well be the only one here who's actually read King Poppy. I fear, moreover, the way the smoke flings and flails itself from your barbecue brings back that terrible morning in Sing Sing.
They fried Charlie Becker. Helene looked up from her cummin splitting, while Bruce began to pulverize a young strand, a stand of young sassafras, with all the zeal of a chainsaw catachoumin. And the groundbreaking Irish navvies continued to keen and kvetch, through the hole, cut for a dimmer switch, in a wall of deadeye stiffened with deadeye.
Next to Moore, his little punt at our dock, was Joe Hanff, the banker who helped Louis B. Meyer and Thomas Edison develop a cool projection lamp. Where he'd come by the coke and bucket of popcorn, God only knows, he handed them to Dorothy for safekeeping, while he concentrated on the minutiae of the peccary trap and the great trebucket, with which we'd been known to take even larger critters, setting and upsetting the trebucket, as would an obsessive compulsive out of order, until he was himself ousted by Sam. Sam, who repeated the opening phrase, Ashery, Hayish, Asher, of the Book of Psalms.
As he handed Asher of Burbecker and Rowland upholstery nail, which Asher held as grim as grim, while sleeping on, ton upon ton of clay, hay, hair, shoes, and spectacle frames, made it less and less likely that we would land, on our feet, on the Griggstown causeway, any time soon. Ramp divides, please examine your change, as mistakes cannot be rectified. The almost inaudible roar of the millrace drowned out a great-grandfather's prayer.
By which authority did we deny Asher a moel? By which authority did we deny Asher a reeb? Asher, meanwhile, slept on, his most crepe-creepered of cribs, riding out the torrent, riding out the turmoil, of those thousands of Irish navvies piling clay, hay, hair, into their creels, and bearing them at shoulder height or above, with all the zeal of creel catatumans. A tattoo on the left forearm of some child-kin of my children, a very faint tattoo. Once more the storm was howling, and something, da-da-da-da, something about that clay and hair going down the sluice, brought back an afternoon in St. Louis, something about raking the ashes of the barbecue at the end of the veranda, and turning over the loin and flank of a young peccary, its loin so lean and lank, its little ribcage rode narrows, something about turning over that runt of the peccary pharaoh, with a dink and a dink and a dinky dick, brought back that afternoon, something about Sam lighting a menorah and reading a commentary on the Torah, something about Arnie distancing himself from the night and fog of Murder, Inc., to a disbelieving Duke of Wellington and Killadar of Perinda, brought back the day of our own Nacht und Nebel Erlas, on which I'd steadied myself under the gateway arch and pondered the loss of our child.
It was Arnie who'd been the brain behind running rum to those thousands of Irish schlemiels who dug the canal, a flicker from Asher's lids, the little welks and wheels, as if he might be dreaming of a pina colostrum, on Bosco Bell Beach, some young beauty dipping his foot in Johnson's baby oil. Fanny peeked from her astracan, its poil, the poil of a stillborn lamb, again a chainsaw letting rip, again I scrubbed the very latest in traps, while Helene rubbed cornstarch into whatever was curled rar and rar in the autoclave. That peccary with the hind foot, the peaked cap would inquire, it's a bad case of spina bifida.
I heard the bottom drawer, open somewhere, the red stain on the lint that covered whatever it was in the autoclave, brought back an afternoon in Poland, when the smoke would flail and fling itself, maximum headroom from a crematorium at Auschwitz. It was not without some trepidation, so that I trained my camcorder on this group of creel carters bearing clay hay hair at shoulder length or above, through the awesome morning after Hurricane Floyd, as yet another 1921 Benz or 1924 Bugatti came down Canal Road and yet another peaked cap was inquiring of my child kin the meaning of Ashkenaz. Place mask over mouth and nose, my trepidation became more and more pronounced as that smoke would flail and fling itself over Auschwitz.
I looked up from our make-believe version of Boskobel Beach to a cauterized stump of sassafras or sycamore, as the creel carters piled more and more clay hay hair spectacle frames, willkommen, onto the line of carryalls and camions by the edge of the flooded stream, those creel carters imagining in excited reverie the arches of the bridge wrought with the model motto, Albeit Macht Frei. Well I looked up through the swing and swale of smoke, please leave a message after the beep, and watched the kebab babby we had lost a year or two back put on its best bib and tucker and watched it put out its little bit of a wing all tinged with char as if to set off for the real Boskobel Beach on which we had met Sandra Hughes and Anton Heyer, oblivious to the piles of hair, spectacle frames, booties and brogans born along from whenever, wherever. The full name is Auschwitz Birkenau, Sam was explaining to Anton and Sandra, who had somehow summoned themselves.
Asher slept on of course despite his thrush, despite his diaper rash, the flood water having receded from the point on the driveway at which the Pakisandra had earlier been swamped, the point at which Arnie had fixed some class of a tow rope to the chassis of the Studebaker. I simply don't have it in me to bribe a ball player, he would maintain, steadying himself with a handful of main as he hooked the rope to the hams of a draft mule. This truck makes wide right turns.
The fact that the slew of interlocutors in Asher's glabrous face now included, of all things, the peccary runt, do not litter, left me no less awestruck than if the Studebaker would be suddenly yanked back to the factory in South Bend from which it had been packed off, open this end. Then if the soul of one of the dozen stillborn lambs sewn into Fanny's astracan were to recover radical innocence and learn, then if scouring the trap by which I had taken that peccary so lank and lean by its dinky hind leg, don't walk, then if don't walk, then if don't walk, then if scouring might make it clean. An overwhelming sense of deja vu, the creel caravan swaying along the salt route into Timbuktu, Fanny taking up a handheld microphone and embarking on second-hand rows, the convoy of salt merchants setting down their loys at one and the same moment, our pileated woodpecker tapping at the bark of three successive sycamores in the hope of finding one tune.
The piles of clay hay hair spectacle frames, hand-me-down booties and brogans now loaded onto the ark, causing it to lie so much lower in the water that Uncle Arnie gives a heavy hint to Fanny that she should cut the chorus of second-hand rows and jump ship. The white wall tire, Helaine concurs, is the beginning of the pram in the hall. Asher sleeps on attended by two teddy bears, his soul less likely than ever to recover radical innocence and learn at last that it is self-delighting.
At a correlate, Sam's widow is drawing up A, B and C lists as of the correlates for bears, whom she'll invite to a reception thrown by herself and Arnie, unapproved road for the 1919 World Series winning Cincinnati Reds. If there's no hatred in a mind, Isaac Wolfe pounds and expounds, assault and battery of the wind can never tear the data from the leaf. As for the killdeer, Helaine peeks from an aster can almost as natty as Fanny's, you're thinking in all likelihood of the killdeer of Perinda.
The ark now lies so much lower in the water, stop ahead, that Uncle Arnie gives another heavy hint to the Cincinnati Reds that they should also jump ship. Achtung! The 1920 Studebakers just one step ahead of a panther tank, nodding approvingly through the ghetto after the Germans have massacred the Jews of Bialystok. The wind bred on the Atlantic has broken Belmar and Siegert, Boundbrook is broken.
The roof leveling wind profane and irreverent, the wind which was at the spearhead of the attack on the ark, almost inaudible, the memory of a three-month growth spurt, no more than a flicker for rent. Behind Asher's sleeping lids, the A, B and C lists of his forebears in his glabrous face, Hanf, Wolfe, Reinhardt, Abrams. A Reinhardt beginning to fuss as a peaked cap inquires about the orthodox position on the eating of white-lipped peccary.
The train stopped in Bialystok's running neither to Warsaw nor Leningrad. Helene, uttering a little cuss as the yellow of that star brings back the out-and-out yellowness of a cylinder of gas she once saw on Charing Cross Road. Now Isaac Wolfe, a Yale grad, looks on helplessly at the mill race on which signposts, signboard, birdseed, keep out, bridge freezes before road, do not drive in breakdown lane, live bait, my lonely helter-skelter $500 fine, the makeshift oven in which we meant keep clear all directions, the Vermont decal on that bugotty load of grain alcohol, slow, the out-and-out yellow of the signpost that points toward the place where the soul might recover radical innocence, no stopping except for repairs, the makeshift oven in which we meant to bake the peccary en croute, contents under pressure, the freezer bag into which we bundled the carry-out from the Sahara, the signpost that points to where the Missouri had not as yet been swollen, hump, no shoulder, no rail, are all born along toll booth to where Uncle Arnie's father, Abraham Rothstein, one of the founders of Beth Israel, yes, Beth Israel, joins Fanny Bryce in the version of My Man she first sang in the Ziegfeld Follies, a flicker from behind the lids as if those children kin might flee as they fled the Cossacks in the Ukraine, please remember to take your belongings when you leave the train, woken as they now are by a pileated Roland and Burbecker tapping into a sycamore, Asher's face, a fox's mask, nailed to a long-gone doorpost by an Irish schlemiel, as likely as not to mosque his brogans for a ladle of rum, what's with these police captains like Charlie Becker, Arnie puts his arm around Helene who being chosen finds life flat, contents may have shifted during flight, who think they're above the law, who think they're born without belly buttons, the police launch maneuvering by brings back riot shields and batons, some child kin of my children picking at his kohlrabi, now Helene leaves off rubbing cornstarch into the arch of whatever lies in the autoclave, sets the little beak of her colibri wobblingly to a cigarette, pull to open and reaches into a drawer for the poultry shears, the hacking through a babby bone, no obstacle but Gregory's wood and one bare hill slippery when wet, bringing back the morning Dr. Patel had systematically drawn the child from Jean's womb for hire, Uncle Arnie all the while hanging a white walled tire about the draft mule's neck, the draft mule no less throwered thrawn than whichever wall deemed the pram in the hallway the end of art, the peaked cap sweet talking that young Abrams or Reinhardt with the offer of a tin of waffle at ten, should he feel able to enlighten him on the particular house in the Bialystok ghetto in which his uncle is hunkering down, Asher puts his lips to the shofar of a long-gone pacifier as Isaac Wolfe expounds to Fanny Bryce it's from ghetto a foundry not boar ghetto, a burrow, on that little gore that little gusset of ground into which my cast of thousands of Irish schmucks have been herded, halt, Asher opens his eyes once more the storm is howling as it howled when Isaac shouted down the board of Yale, the black horse tavern still served ale, when Sophie was found dead in the bath, a ringed plover with all her rings stolen please cover, when Sam discontinued his line of Burbecker and Roland upholstery nails for sale, when we might yet have climbed the hill and escaped by copper mine, when Uncle Arnie was gutshot by George McManus for non-payment of tight-lipped poker-faced debts, when Helene Hanf the celeb was found asleep in the Dewitt nursing home in the arms of Bulwer-Lytton, follow detour, when Fanny tried to stop the leak of a so-called confession by one Joseph Gluck which fingered her ex-husband Nicky Arnstein, when the trebucket of my lonely tour was tripped for the very last time by Joe Hanf, no egress when a cantankerous young Reinhardt or Abrams, no children beyond this point, was borne along at shoulder height by the peat cap out of bounds, when the cry went up from a starving Irish Lameel who washed an endosperm of wheat, dada, from a pile of horse kick, held to the rain one of those thousands of Irish schmucks who still lull, still lull and lollygag between the preposterous towpath and the preposterous berm.
Well that was quite a long poem to read all at once. It really tired me out. I'll just share some initial impressions because I haven't done any research on this poem and there's a lot that I don't understand but the themes that I'm seeing coming through, first of all it seems to take place during this flood that follows Hurricane Floyd. The title of the poem is “At the Sign of the Black Horse, September 1999.”
There seems to be a story in the poem but it's a bit obscure. The narrator of the poem is with his family and with a baby named Asher who sleeps on throughout the poem.
And, uh, there's plenty of, I suppose, Irish references here. You know, a shawl of Carrick Macross. I'm assuming that's Irish, but I could be wrong.
I'd have to look it up. Quite a lot of place names that I don't necessarily recognize, but then there's a lot of references to, first of all, World War II, the Germans, the Jews, Auschwitz, basically the Holocaust. A lot of Jewish, Judaic references and vocabulary and names.
Kind of a whole litany of Jewish figures in this poem slash story, including Arnie Rothstein, who rigged the 1919 World Series, and Fanny Bryce, the singer and Ziegfeld Follies dancer. So a lot of historical references back to World War I, World War II, but then a lot of contemporary references as well. So it kind of keeps going back and forth between the present and the past, which creates, uh, you know, for the reader, kind of a rather confusing story that somehow weaves together a lot of repetition in this poem.
You can't tell from the reading of it, but there are, I guess you could say, signs that appear in the poem, standard signs that are in capital letters throughout the poem. Canal road, no way out. Please secure your own oxygen mask before attending to children.
Do not fill above this line. So a lot of sort of instructions and warnings that are in capital letters throughout this poem, something about cooking a peccary. And I actually have to look that up because peccary, it sounds familiar, but I'm not quite sure what that is.
So let me, I mean, there's a ton of words in this poem that I would like to look up, but I don't feel like I, uh, want to spend all that time. It would take a long time. Yeah.
As I thought, it's a, it's a kind of, um, boar, uh, related to a hog or wild hog, wild hog, wild boar peccary. Why they're cooking a peccary. They're native to neotropical regions, South America to Central America and portions of Arizona, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
So, um, where is this story taking place? Where is the sign of the black horse? I don't know. That's a mystery would definitely have to look up the background to this poem. A lot of repetition of language, a lot of place names being thrown down and, um, characters who are kind of doing things together like cooking.
And there seems to be kind of a barbecue going around along and, uh, and, uh, some kind of conversation between these historical and contemporary characters, some biblical references here and there. I think, you know, what stands out to me of this poem is his use of language, that he is such a master of language that all the place names seem to be carefully chosen. That the names of things that he chooses, um, seem to be carefully chosen to have a particular sound, a particular, you know, connection to the language of the poem.
Creel Carter's piled more and more clay, hay, hair spectacle frames. That's, that is also repeated throughout the poem and must have some significant meaning, uh, onto the line of curials and camions. And again, these are words that I think one must look up to really understand them.
Lots of, uh, different, you know, linguistic references, uh, German thrown in here might connect to the story of the, of the Jews. Uh, it might be a migration story. It seems also he's connecting the story of the Irish people to the Jewish people in different ways, kind of weaving together those strands.
At the very end, he says, uh, one of those thousands of Irish schmucks, and he also says Irish schlemiels. So he's kind of connecting the Irish to the Jewish people and maybe, uh, you know, migrant people who are escaping devastation, war, starvation seems to be a common theme. Uh, migrants who went to America, perhaps, uh, because, uh, you know, the, a lot of the story seems to take place, Hurricane Floyd in America, uh, would have to look up, you know, that would be an important thing to look up, Hurricane Floyd.
Um, I don't really want to look up this poem because I feel like there's probably a good explanation of this poem somewhere on the internet, but I kind of like going through a poem and trying to understand it in my own way, rather than kind of reading somebody else's explanation of what the poem was about. Hurricane Floyd struck North Carolina in September, 1999. Okay.
I kind of remember that. So this is sort of a historical event that's very specific to a part of, a part of America. Why he's chosen that event, whether or not he was there at the time, I don't know enough about his biography to know whether Paul Muldoon was, was there and witnessed Hurricane Floyd. And he's kind of channeling that into, into this poem, whether he read about it. It's all a bit of a mystery, but I'm going to stop there because I think the poem kind of speaks for itself.
It's the language of the poem and the flow of the poem and this sort of dreamlike set of imagery and associations that speaks for itself. And I think it's up to the reader or the listener of the poem to try to figure out for yourself what the, what the meaning of this poem is. So, plus I've got other stuff to do and a big full day ahead and more papers to grade.
So I'm going to sign off for now. And, and if you like what I'm doing here, please make a comment. I always appreciate comments.
So see you next time.
[returns]
All right. This is a little addendum to my interpretation of the poem.
I said, I wasn't gonna do a lot of searching and stuff, but of course I got curious and I decided to search the internet and find out more about the poem and about Paul Muldoon and his biography. And now it all makes a lot more sense to me because his wife is actually named Jean, Jean Hanff Korelitz. And all three of those names, Jean, Hanff and Korelitz come up repeatedly in the poem.
So that, those are references to his wife and her family. And she is Jewish. His children, Dorothy and of course Asher, the baby in the poem, are therefore part Jewish and part Irish.
And so now the poem makes a lot more sense. It's a at least semi-biographical poem about his family, how they are bringing together the Irish and the Jewish roots. And I think that the flood then kind of serves as a metaphor for the flood of migrants, the flood of people around the world converging in different ways.
So it connects to the story of this flood of Irish migrants who helped to build the canal, as well as the Jewish migrants who did all kinds of things, including gangsterism, as in the case of Arnie Rothstein. So it's interesting. His wife, Jean, is actually a Dartmouth graduate.
So she's comes from my own alma mater, Dartmouth College. She was class of ‘83. And she is a very well-known novelist.
And I didn't know anything about her until I looked her up. Shows how connected I am to the world of literature these days. But, you know, it's these kinds of activities that make you more connected.
The other thing is that it appears that he actually was there for Hurricane Floyd. So this is also kind of a biographical moment. He was a professor at Princeton, and New Jersey definitely did receive a big share of the flooding during Hurricane Floyd.
So it kind of makes sense that he led from this real personal experience, and then used association and all of these various techniques to kind of build a long poem out of this very unique and powerful experience that he had with his family experiencing the floodwaters in New Jersey. This is my guess. I could be wrong, but it all makes sense to me.
So now the poem makes a lot more sense, even though it's still a very dreamy and associative poem, which is very much in the format of his style and his way of expressing himself in poetry. And I think there's also some references to W.B. Yeats in the poem as well that I read about online, but I'm going to leave those aside. I think that's the most important piece that I wanted to share with you.
And now I am really done and moving on with my day.