THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER11, 2021 53
could not have been performed because
it might have invited the unwanted at-
tention of suspicious neighbors or the
state.” For Senderovich, “the uncircum-
cised Jewish penis is not a problem that
needs to be fixed.”
In the nineteenth century, circumci-
sion expanded beyond a religious cus-
tom. The squeamish Victorians believed
that the procedure would lead to better
hygiene (and discourage masturbation).
American physicians reasoned that Jews
had far fewer sexually transmitted dis-
eases such as syphilis because of their
missing foreskins. In truth, Jews may
have suffered from lower rates of these
diseases by having less sex outside their
communities. Today, some doctors sup-
port circumcision because certain stud-
ies show that it may lower the risk of
H.I.V. transmission and infant urinary-
tract infections.On the other side of the ledger,
though, two out of every million boys
circumcised in the United States die
from the procedure, according to the
American Academy of Family Physi-
cians; other studies place the death toll
higher. Estimates of complications vary
from around 0.2 per cent of surgeries to
as much as ten per cent. Most are rela-
tively minor, but some have resulted in
amputation of the glans or the entire9
One of the big dangers in keeping rabbits
is that the doe is more likely than not to eat her litter.
We kept them in separate hutches under the row
of damsons.
From this vantage point
I could see Armagh and the twin spires of St. Patrick’s
Cathedral.
The story went the I.R.A. man who led the raid was carrying
a Thompson.
10
I was still trying to get clear
why Macha’s charioteer
had dandled a Barbary ape imported from Gibraltar
when he should have been tightening the pony’s girth.
In a novel by Raymond Chandler
a man may charge twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses
as he climbs toward the chandelier.
Here I would still wear an altar boy’s soutane and surplice
and hover like his own phantasm
as he tried to get clear
of the world of seed-surges and menses.
11
The constant friction
in Northern Ireland made the term “Orange Free State”
seem nuts
yet Larry Toal had an Orange Free State stamp complete
with its original gum.
There was little likelihood Catholics would ever
achieve parity.
12
I may have started climbing because I’d been slapped for
some minor infraction.
Not the little slap Bacall gives Bogart in “To Have and
Have Not.”
More like the slap Gunnar gives Hallgerdur in Njál’s Saga.
Hard to believe that in years to come
I would drive Lauren Bacall home from a New York party.
Larry Toal had heard the National Museum of Ireland
owned a stuffed quagga.
13
What the parishioners held dear
was the idea there would be no consequences
for giving someone a clip round the ear.
When would I ever be done with the effrontery
of a clip round the ear or a slap in the dial
from the parish priest for having suggested that a
three-leaf clover
represented the Trinity as one flesh?14
As time went by, my mother would take to singing
“The Lonely Goatherd.”
The chances of finding a springbok
in the National Museum were about as strong
as finding a beatnik on a bog road between Balleybofey
and Lifford.15
The small crowd that had by now gathered
was almost equally divided between spurring me on and
ordering me back.
I loved how Hallgerdur would later deny Gunnar
a strand of her hair to replace his broken bowstring.
My parachute straps had been made at Moygashel as part
of the war effort.
The damsons were themselves notorious for sending out
runners.16
What the crowd holds dear
is the notion there’ll be no reckoning in the political sphere.
In August, 1971, my neighbor would be bundled into an
Army Land Rover
and installed in a new prison in Long Kesh.
Surely it’s not only in a novel by Raymond Chandler
that a body tenses?
Even as I climbed toward the amber chandelier
the Unionists, almost as an involuntary
response, had introduced internment without trial.
What they held dear
was the idea there would be no consequences.—Paul Muldoon