The Tuesday Poem
Fourteen years old, learning the alphabet, He finds letters harder to catch than hares Without a greyhound. Can't I give him a dog To track them down, or put them in a cage? He's caught in a trap, until I let him go, Pinioned by "Don't you want to learn to read?"I'll be the same man whatever I do".
He looks at the page as a mule balks at a gap From which a goat may hobble out and bleat. His eyes jink from a sentence like flushed snipe Escaping shot. A sharp word, and he'll mooch Back to his piebald mare and bantam cock. Our purpose is as tricky to retrieve As mercury from a smashed thermometer.
"I'll not read any more". Should I give up? His hands, long-fingered as a Celtic scribe's, Will grow callous, gathering sticks or scrap; Exploring pockets of the horny drunk Loiterers at the fairs, giving them lice. A neighbour chuckles. "You can never tame The wild duck: when his wings grow, he'll fly off ".
If books resembled roads, he'd quickly read: ut they're small farms to him, fenced by the page, Ploughed into lines, with letters drilled like oats: A field of tasks he'll always be outside. If words were bank notes, he would filch a wad; If they were pheasants, they'd be in his pot For breakfast, or if wrens he'd make them king.
* Richard Murphy was born in 1927 in the West of Ireland. He now lives in Sri Lanka. He has published many collections of poems, most recently Poems 1952-2012 (Lilliput Press). He has received the Martin Toonder Award and the AE Memorial Award among many others.
