Moy Sand and Gravel

To come out of the Olympic Cinema and be taken aback

by how, in the time it took a dolly to travel

along its little track

to the point where two movie stars’ heads

had come together smackety-smack

and their kiss filled the whole screen,

those two great towers directly across the road

at Moy Sand and Gravel

had already washed, at least once,

what had flowed

or been dredged from the Blackwater’s bed

and were washing it again, load by load,

as if washing might make it clean.

From “Moy Sand and Gravel” by Paul Muldoon

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 108 pp., $22)