The Duality of Heaven and Earth Hidden In Mules
Paul Muldoon is very adept at hiding different layers of meaning and imagery in his poetry. A tennis match can be two boys exploring each other’s physical prowess, while also being a simple game of tennis. “Mules” can also be read on multiple levels. The most basic level of the poem is a child’s recounting of the conception and birth of a mule. The form of the poem works well to take the reader full circle from asking a question, to explaining a position, and finally pondering an answer. The poem is an extended metaphor that compares lowly barnyard animals to biblical figures. The poem poses a question about duality of the worldly and divine in the first line, and then illustrates the narrator’s opinion through the depiction of a mule’s conception and birth. Muldoon’s simple form succinctly contains a great deal to reflect on.
Muldoon begins by posing a question. The rest of the poem is organized in four quatrains. The stanzas have line counts of four, four, three, and four. Most sentences in the poem use enjambment. Enjambment is used to keep the stanzas evenly spaced, and subtly indicate the comparison between the earthly and divine. The two sentences of the first stanza both use enjambment, and are split between the parts of the sentence that depicts earthly things, and the part that depicts divine. “Her feet of clay gave the lie/To the star burned in our mare’s brow,” and “Would Parsons’ jackass not rest more assured/That cross wrenched from his shoulders?” The order of events in the poem is also of note. The poem moves linearly in time after the question is asked, and Muldoon makes a point of changing tenses as the poem progresses. The poem begins in the past tense, “We had loosed them…” “They had shuddered…” and ends in the present, “dropped tonight in the cowshed.” By first posing the question and then ending with the narrator pointing out the farmers’ reflection on the mule’s origins, Muldoon makes the reader reflect on the events in the same order they happened for the narrator. Each line of the poem has a meaning that relates to the theme of duality between the divine and the earthly.
Starting with the question asked in the first line, Muldoon introduces his technique of using common phrases to get at meanings of greater importance than initially expected. While phrases such as “best of both worlds,” “below their belts,” and “dropped tonight” can just be thought of as their everyday meanings, Muldoon is using them for more than expected. By asking “Should they not have the best of both worlds?” Muldoon could really be saying “why shouldn’t a mule be of both God and the earth?” A mule is a combination of two completely different species, and the result is a creature both like and unlike both. The horse in the story has “feet of clay,” which is an allusion to when a hero appears almost god-like, but ultimately ends up being human. Continuing the theme of combining the earthly with the heavenly, Muldoon marks the horse in a way that evokes the Virgin Mary. Both the horse and the Virgin have a “star burned” overhead. A similar allusion can be made for the donkey that bears the mark of God on his back. The metaphor of the mule as a combination of earth and heaven is continued in the final stanza. “We might yet claim that it sprang from earth…” “That we would know from what heights it fell.” Muldoon has the farmers contemplate the mule’s origins so that the duality is highlighted to the reader.
In the same way Modernists were making the old new, Muldoon takes the simple, everyday mule, and gives it new meaning. While one could take his rough writing at face value as plain, he always hides much greater meaning beneath the surface. The mule could be thought of as simply a combination of donkey and horse, but Muldoon makes it out to be much more by referencing the earthly and divine in the first stanza. Concluding his extended metaphor in the final quatrain, Muldoon provides one last image of the combination of Heaven and Earth, “We might yet claim that it sprang from earth / Were it not for the afterbirth / Trailed like some fine, silk parachute, / That we would know from what heights it fell.” The mule is birthed like a normal barnyard creature, and yet Muldoon points out that trailing the earthly mule is its “fine, silk parachute.” The mule is an earthly creature that’s descent is aided by a heaven-sent provision. In his characteristic style and reminiscent of the Modernists making the old new, Muldoon fills his poem with much more than the birth of a mule.
Muldoon’s “Mules” is a simple narrative that works as a large metaphor for the duality of earth and the heavens. He introduces the theme by stating a question at the beginning of the poem that asks about having the best of both worlds. The two worlds are then implied to be the earth and the heavens. The poem is organized to take the reader through a reflective process on the conception and birth of a mule. Muldoon includes allusions to the worldly and divine in almost every line of the poem. The poem introduces a question about duality of the worldly and divine in the first line, and then illustrates the narrator’s opinion through the depiction of a mule’s conception and birth.
On the "Recordings" section of his website, Paul Muldoon has a reading of "Mules."
Paul Muldoon reading "Mules"
http://www.paulmuldoon.net
