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Poem

Richard Murphy

The Reading Lesson

The Reading Lesson

The Reading Lesson

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:
But 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.
Close

The Reading Lesson

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:
But 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.

The Reading Lesson

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