with his hope for ëthe affirmation and acceptance of differenceí.^34 As
the poem tries to imagine the figure to be inbetween the dry and wet
sides of the road; he is literally at the point where ëa shower of rain//
Had stoppedí or where the ëwall of glassí has ëtoppledí. In ëthe middle
of the streetí he imagines a no manís land, a mean or a non-dialectical
middle that is difficult to find. This problematic notion of Mide or the
middle serves to deconstruct the frontiers between extremes and to
hold them together in tension.
The idea of a middle ground can be developed further with
consideration of the name of ëGolightlyís Laneí in which the man
stands. The name ëgo lightlyí evokes the image of treading on egg
shells. The initial Boundary Commission was supposed to be
temporary and remains a testimony to the lack of resolution by
politicians as they go-lightly around the issue. In addition, the name
Golightly links with the name of the protagonist Gallogly, the heavy-
handed IRA man, from ëThe More a Man Has The More a Man
Wantsí, who is ëotherwise known as Golightlyí.^35 The name, Gallogly,
is the Irish version of the word ëgallowglassí or ëgallÛglachí, for
mercenary soldier.^36 The galloglachs were Scottish mercenary soldiers
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, driven out of Scotland by
the English. In ëThe More a Man Has The More a Man Wantsí,
ëGolightlyí is ëotherwise known as Ingoldsby,/ otherwise known as
Englishí and he is associated with the legend of a Kentish man, the
fighting knight Sir Ingoldsby Bray, in love with Lady Alice. This is a
story told by Richard Barham (1788ñ1845) in his comic verse
narratives about supernatural themes in The Ingoldsby Legends (1840ñ
7). Linking the names Gallogly and Golightly, Muldoon collapses the
distinctions between two irreconcilables: the IRA man on the run and
the English ëGallí. So the name of ëGolightlyís Laneí is poignant
since due to Muldoonís use elsewhere of assonance and poetic pun, he
collapses distinctions between ësidesí or frontiers, or between the
names of native and foreign; Golightly is associated with the English,
Irish and Scottish. Clair Wills has drawn attention to the polysemous
34 Kearney, Postnationalist Ireland, p.107.
35 Muldoon, ëThe More a Man Has the More a Man Wantsí, New and Selected
Poems, p.98.
36 Bernard OíDonoghue, ëMagic Mushroomsí, rev. Paul Muldoonís Quoof, Poetry
Review, No.73, Vol.4 (Jan 1984), p.53.