[in Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's The Fifty Minute Mermaid], and consequent high infant mortality, are explained in terms of their "system of symbols" and adopted veneration of dairy products: "Even in ordinary speech they call what they hold most dear/'the butter of my heart' and 'top of the milk'". The merfolk's tragic wrong-headedness inspires a natural dismay in the reader, but instinctive condemnation is brought up short by the tone of the last stanza:For, let's face it, despite their adaptability
and their gift for fading into the woodwork,
like chameleons,
they were water-dwellers before they came on land and, however we might describe
what they'd morph into, it certainly wasn't
human beings.
from The Times Literary Supplement: Translated merfolk: What happens when an Irish poet, with Paul Muldoon's help, adapts to dry land
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