{"id":133,"date":"2009-02-23T23:32:47","date_gmt":"2009-02-24T03:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/?p=133"},"modified":"2026-10-13T11:37:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T15:37:33","slug":"the-sightseers-paul-muldoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/?p=133","title":{"rendered":"The Sightseers &#8211; Paul Muldoon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-133-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/audio\/sightseers.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/audio\/sightseers.mp3\">https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/audio\/sightseers.mp3<\/a><\/audio><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">read by Paul Muldoon.  audio from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulmuldoon.net\/\"><i>paulmuldoon.net<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>My father and mother, my brother and sister<br \/>\nand I, with uncle Pat, our dour best-loved uncle,<br \/>\nhad set out that Sunday afternoon in July<br \/>\nin his broken-down Ford<\/p>\n<p>not to visit some graveyard\u2014one died of shingles,<br \/>\none of fever, another&#8217;s knees turned to jelly\u2014<br \/>\nbut the brand-new roundabout at Ballygawley,<br \/>\nthe first in mid-Ulster.<\/p>\n<p>Uncle Pat was telling us how the B-Specials<br \/>\nhad stopped him one night somewhere near Ballygawley<br \/>\nand smashed his bicycle<\/p>\n<p>and made him sing the Sash and curse the Pope of Rome.<br \/>\nThey held a pistol so hard against his forehead<br \/>\nthere was still the mark of an O when he got home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>read by Paul Muldoon. audio from paulmuldoon.net My father and mother, my brother and sister and I, with uncle Pat, our dour best-loved uncle, had set out that Sunday afternoon in July in his broken-down Ford not to visit some graveyard\u2014one died of shingles, one of fever, another&#8217;s knees turned to jelly\u2014 but the brand-new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-ballygawley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poem.oftheweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}