Even the caged, tame goat can dreamof a distant mountain, inclines mauvefrom the blossom of heather smellingsweeter than any bagged feed; memoriesof a mountain he has never been near,moving from gene to gene like the yellowof an eye or the kink in course white hair.At the Christmas fete, the cage restsbeneath a flimsy canopy, flaps are steadyin a windless moment, a momentwhen the goat is calm from his steadydreaming, dreaming the thoughts:“It is the narrowness of the limestoneledge which keeps me standingand not a cage too narrow to lie in.”The milling market throng is a bankof passing cloud, too urban to knowof Puck, too sober to kneel in obeisanceto caprine royalty. For in pagan memorygoats can be kings and vain kings can sproutears like goats, though not here in the city’sgrey, not here in the Street of the YellowHorse, where clouds pass by on feet.
Goat Dreaming
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“Goat Dreaming” from QUALITY CONTROL AT THE MIRACLE FACTORY: by Patrick Cotter.
Published by Dedalus Press on May 12, 2025.
Copyright © 2o25 by Patrick Cotter.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Patrick Cotter lives and works in Cork, Ireland, where he edits the journal Southword and curates the International Poetry Festival. His poems have appeared in the Financial Times, London Review of Books, POETRY, Poetry Review, & elsewhere. His latest book is Quality Control at the Miracle Factory. More at www.patrickcotter.ie.
Quality Control at the Miracle Factory, the fourth full-length collection of poems by Irish poet Patrick Cotter, reflects the dark times of its writing, moving with unease through the world. Injustice and brutality are faced unflinchingly while the miracle of survival and endurance is credited and marvelled at, wherever it might occur.
“Patrick Cotter is a poet capable of being both playful and serious to excellent effect. He has a gift for creating a rueful narrative voice that milks both sympathy and laughs from the reader. The writing is always finely crafted; it is conversational but learned, seemingly effortless, and is studded everywhere with the poet’s vast and unusual vocabulary. He is a modern poet in the best sense of that word and he deserves many, many readers.”
—Nuala O’Connor, Poetry International (San Diego)
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