Oh Rabbie Burns you might have goneto the sugar-land of plentyand who’s to say you’d not have beena strutting man so kentymaking a bonny living thereupon the backs of slaves who stoopedand struggled with the weightthat bought them early graves?The beauty of the red, red rosemust wither in the heatthe sweetness of the laverock’s tunemust […]
True Thomas lay on Huntlie bank,A ferlie he spied wi’ his e’e;And there he saw a ladye brightCome riding down by the Eildon Tree.Her shirt was o’ the grass-green silk.Her mantle o’ the velvet fyne;At ilka tett of her horse’s maneHung fifty siller bells and nine.True Thomas, he pull’d aff his capAnd louted low down […]
On 21 December 1988, the longest night of the year, Pan Am Flight 103 fell on the small town of Lockerbie, killing all 259 passengers and crew, and 11 Lockerbie residents. It remains the worst terrorist attack on UK soil. The Wishin’ Gate Leuk beneath ma gravestane,through the keekie-hole when the rowan’s laden,when the summer’s […]
Tha Lochinvar òg ’s e air nochdadh bhon iar,
Is gun aon each nas fheàrr aig neach feadh nan Crìoch;
’S gun aige ball-airm ach deagh chlaidheamh a-mhàin,
E marcachd gun armachd ’s na aonar a-ghnàth;
Brown burn water dropping
/ Between the grey stones,
/ The lapse and the murmur,
/ The bright overtones
/ Of…
Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small?
/ Only as a patch of hillside may be a cliché corner
/ To a fool…
An unco sough i’ the gloamin’
/ An’ a flaff o’ risin’ win’,
/ A glisk o’ stoundin’ waters
/ …
I sing the bonny banks o Fleet,
/ Where Nature spreads her various treasure;…
The monks liked cats for company, I hear.
/ I can believe it.
/ Felines of ink and gold
/ Arch the capitals,
/ Curve into the celibate…
1. EVENING SKETCH
/
/ Night squats on the grey estate: the river,
/ the roads turn black. Up a deserted side-street
/ darkness tears away from…
Chambered cairn: third millennia B.C.
/
/ The Cairnholy sun
/ dyed the cold sky red,
/ dispensed with forests;
/ made sea echo stone.
/ For, in winter, Wigtown
/ deals elements;…
The derelict hotel, the tower on the hill,
/ water in the tower,
/ the height of the tower, the place I…
/
/ The stairways can’t…
