The poem begins with the poet-speaker’s recollection of his first encounter with a pineapple, as a young adolescent of thirteen. He recalls the excitement he felt, and the fruit’s seductive and exotic qualities. The speaker also remembers realizing that part of the fruit’s seductive appeal lay in its mystery and in its symbolic importance. He notes too, however, that as a young person he did not know that the fruit was a “worldwide symbol of munificence.” This largely sweet memory is soon overlaid with references to the memory of civil violence, which marked the poet’s later adolescence in Northern Ireland. Muldoon makes the transition from positive memory to disturbing memory by invoking a series of similar sounding words, starting with “munificence” and “munitions.”

Throughout the last six lines of the poem, words mutate or change, as the speaker free associates from one idea to another. This happens first with the shift from “munificence” to “munitions” in line 9. Although the words sound similar and share the first four letters, they bear very different meanings, as “munificence” refers to generosity and “munitions” refer to explosives. By juxtaposing these words, Muldoon emphasizes the mutability of words, and the idea that words, ideas, and perhaps even things can shift with startling ease. This sense of mutability is reinforced by the final word shift from “pineapples” to “pomegranates” in line 14. In this final pairing, the shift is again from something positive (the munficent pineapple) to something more menacing, as pomegranates symbolize temptation that leads to time in the underworld.

The poem alludes to the violent conflict that took place during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which intensified during the 1960s and 1970s. Muldoon alludes to the conflict when he uses the word “munitions” while reminiscing about his youth. He refers to the Troubles again when he adds, “if you understand / where I’m coming from,” since he literally comes from Northern Ireland. Muldoon follows this sentence with another that expresses a wish for peace, an end to munitions such as “the hand grenade / in one corner of the planet.” The last part of this sentence may also allude to the Arab-Israeli conflict in the homeland of Yehuda Amichai, to whose memory Muldoon dedicates the poem. Throughout the late twentieth century, both Northern Ireland and Israel were the sites of ongoing violent conflict and struggle.

Muldoon conveys a sense of general uncertainty by repeating the question “right?” in lines 9 and 14. This questioning phrase undercuts the speaker’s confidence. The sense of doubt is reinforced by the mutability or shifting of words throughout the poem. Nothing in the poem seems entirely stable or fixed, and this instability generates a sense of anxiety. Rather than expressing the confident hope that peace is possible, the speaker concludes the poem by doubting that the object about which he thought he was musing—the pineapple—is not in fact something entirely different.