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 a 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, Exploring pockets of the h.... 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's quickly read: But they're small farms to him, fenced by the page, Ploughed into lines, wiht 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