use of words in Muldoonís poetry and argued that this is a postmodern
characteristic of linguistic interchange that erodes differences between
meanings in a moment of exchange.^37 What is important here, is how
Muldoonís polysemous use of words also demonstrates the hybrid
aspects of language and identity. Residing around a ënon-dialectic
middleí that is difficult to find results in a critical dis-positioning
between extremes that holds irreconcilables together in their dif-
ference.
At the edge, boundary or limit, the speaker in the poem both
signifies and collapses distinctions between the two sides. He is dis-
located at a borderline and he is unable to judge which side to join.
The man in ëThe Boundary Commissioní expresses no fixed
allegiances. Located at the limit, the man holds onto his individualism
as it is not subsumed within any tribe and his dis-position provides a
passage between identities whereby the authenticity of either side is
questioned. Another way of reading this situation would be to say that
the man on the border has no identity; he remains untouched by
identity politics. In his refusal to engage with either side, he avoids
encountering alterity in an act of extreme individualism that provides
no opportunity for action. Hence, interpretation of the poem divides
into two readings that sees the speaker on the one hand, providing a
passage between identities and on the other, creating a cleavage
between identities. In this way, Muldoonís poem offers us two further
sides to be between. Can this cleavage between self and ëotherí, or
between two different sides be viewed as enabling, disabling or both,
and for whom? The ëanswerí offered to this question in ëThe
Boundary Commissioní is that, unlike Muldoonís characterization of
Heaneyís early collections, the speaker has allegiances to neither side.
This lack of resolution is the only way to understand Muldoonís
conception of identity and representation. There is a tension in the
poem between encountering alterity, being touched and changed by it,
and facing ëothernessí but refusing to engage with it. The poem asks
how far the wall of glass holds between identities and, although the
37 Wills, ëThe Lie of the Land: Language, Imperialism and Trade in Paul
Muldoonís Meeting the British, The Chosen Ground Essays on the
Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland, ed., Neil Corcoran (Pennsylvania:
Dufour, 1992), pp.123ñ53.