acknowledges that there are differences as well as similarities between
the two colonies:
It would be naÔve of me to say that thereís no parallel. There is a sense in which
the Irish culture was [Ö] not exactly decimated, but certainly, the history of
England and Ireland has not been a happy one. Now I donít think Iíd want to go
to the extent, of course, where one would say that this was absolute genocide ñ
as one might say of what happened in North America.^28A colonial history of boundaries is also presented in Muldoonís
poem ëThe Boundary Commissioní from Why Brownlee Left (1980).
Guinn Batten notices that one cannot talk of ëbordersí without evoking
the political, historical and psychic trauma of the Boundary
Commissionís 1920s partition of Ireland into two states.^29 Irelandís
colonial history is one of dispossession and Ireland is a society where
possessive and definitive religious, territorial and racial frontiers have
been drawn up. ëThe Boundary Commissioní presents an uncertain
space ëacross Golightlyís laneí:
You remember that village where the border ran
Down the middle of the street,
With the butcher and baker in different states?
Today he remarked how a shower of rainHad stopped so cleanly across Golightlyís lane
It might have been a wall of glass
That had toppled over. He stood there, for ages,
To wonder which side, if any, he should be on.^30In this poem boundaries are both created and undermined.
First, there is a division between the perspective of the poetic
speaker and the perspective of the male figure whose speech is
reported at the beginning of the poem. The use of two perspectives,
28 Muldoon in America, interviewed by Christopher Cook, BBC. Radio 3, 1994.
Cf. Tim Kendall, Paul Muldoon, p.145.
29 Guinn Batten, ëìHe Could Barely Tell One from the Otherî: The Borderline
Disorders of Muldoonís Poetryí, The South Atlantic Quarterly, Winter 1996,
Vol .95, No.1, p.174.
30 Muldoon, ëThe Boundary Commissioní, Why Brownlee Left (London: Faber,
1980), p.15.