The Tuesday Poem

The dog who read books had nowhere

in his brain for the words to go.

As they streamed in through his eyes, line

by line they re-emerged through each

fibre in his fur with a yelp.

He watched his master’s noiseless act

of reading and copied him as

best he could turning the pages

by swishing his nose, swivelling

his head from side to side and top

to bottom over each page. Words

of English left him a shiny,

glistening coat but Irish words left

him with the most peculiar

smell, attracting the barks in par-

ticular of wolfhounds and red

setters, water spaniels, Kerry

Blues, and the keening of priests who

prayed only in hidden ditches

near forgotten limestone mass rocks.

* Patrick Cotter is the director of Munster Literature Centre, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival and the Cork Spring Poetry Festival. His poem ‘Madra’ won the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry 2013.