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Published: Sat Oct 15 1983
Eva Lundsager, Were now like (detail), 2021, oil on canvas
Why Brownlee Left

Why Brownlee left, and where he went,
Is a mystery even now.
For if a man should have been content
It was him; two acres of barley,
One of potatoes, four bullocks,
A milker, a slated farmhouse.
He was last seen going out to plough
On a March morning, bright and early.

By noon Brownlee was famous;
They had found all abandoned, with
The last rig unbroken, his pair of black
Horses, like man and wife,
Shifting their weight from foot to
Foot, and gazing into the future.

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Paul Muldoon received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2003 for his collection Moy Sand and Gravel. He is currently president of the Poetry Society and the Poetry Editor for The New Yorker. (updated 6/2010)

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