Our first poem for 2018 is an extract from ‘Songs from Typhoid Mary’ from Paul Muldoon’s Lamentations, translations of classic Irish poems.
Hell’s Kitchen (1908)
As I roved out in the West Fifties
In 1895
I found myself in Hell’s Kitchen
Among my own kind
The screams from behind shutters
Clotheslines flecked with soot
Urine standing in puddles
Rain dripping through the roof
The riff-raff and the rowdies
Peep shows and pimps
The junkshops and wharfhouses
All raising a stink
Amidst the filthy and depraved
The women of low repute
Sat Mr August Breihof
Drinking on a stoop
I taught August how to bake a gateau
He taught me the cakewalk
Soon we were going steady
High stepping through New York
from Lamentations (2017)
by Paul Muldoon
