imperialism. As for those calling themselves Englishmen this means
denying an entire ëEnglishí history of invasion and infiltration by
Romans, Jutes, Angles, Saxons and Normans as well as a colonial
history where so-called Englishmen have become intertwined with
Indian, Chinese and African identities to name but a few. However,
observation that there is no single origin on which to base a specific
identity is constantly forgotten when national identities are politicized.
This is not overlooked by Muldoonís poem ëPromises, Promisesí
from Why Brownlee Left (1980) which tells of a colonial who returns
to Raleighís Roanoke colony to find that the old colonials had
altogether disappeared,
Only to glimpse us here and there
As the fair strand in her braid,
The blue in an Indian girlís dead eye.^24Muldoonís poem notices how identities become hybrid, migrant,
rarely fixed and stationary, always ready to be changed and in danger
of becoming extinct. ëPromises, Promisesí alerts us to the splitting and
doubling involved in the colonial encounter.
Liminality and Hybridity
ëMeeting the Britishí, the title poem of Muldoonís 1987 collection,
confronts the problems implicit in an encounter between different
identities. As the poem narrates about a meeting between native
Americans and the British, what happens to identity in this encounter
is intricate:
We met the British in the dead of winter.
The sky was lavenderand the snow lavender-blue.24 Muldoon, ëPromises, Promisesí, Why Brownlee Left (London: Faber, 1980),
pp.24ñ5.