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  • SQA National 5 texts
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Curriculum Level: SQA National 5 texts

Keeping Orchids - by Jackie Kay

{ Poem }

The orchids my mother gave me when we first met
/ are still alive, twelve days later. Although
/
/ some of the buds remain…

Gap Year - by Jackie Kay

{ Poem }

Gap Year
/ (for Mateo)
/
/ I
/ I remember your Moses basket before you were born.
/ I’d stare at the fleecy white sheet for days, weeks,
/ willing…

Lucozade - by Jackie Kay

{ Poem }

My mum is on a high bed next to sad chrysanthemums.
/ ‘Don’t bring flowers, they only wilt and die.’
/ I am scared…

My Grandmother’s Houses - by Jackie Kay

{ Poem }

1
/ She is on the second floor of a tenement.
/ From her front room window you see the cemetery.
/
/ Her bedroom is my…

Basking Shark - by Norman MacCaig

{ Poem }

To stub an oar on a rock where none should be,
/ To have it rise with a slounge out of the…

Visiting Hour - by Norman MacCaig

{ Poem }

The hospital smell
/ combs my nostrils
/ as they go bobbing along
/ green and yellow corridors.
/
/ What seems a corpse
/ is trundled into a lift and…

Assisi - by Norman MacCaig

{ Poem }

The dwarf with his hands on backwards
/ sat, slumped like a half-filled sack
/ on tiny twisted legs from which
/ sawdust might run,
/ outside the…

Trio - by Edwin Morgan

{ Poem }

Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
/ a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights –…

Winter (EM) - by Edwin Morgan

{ Poem }

The year goes, the woods decay, and after,
/ many a summer dies. The swan
/ on Bingham’s pond, a ghost, comes and goes.
/ It…

In the Snack-bar - by Edwin Morgan

{ Poem }

A cup capsizes along the formica,
/ slithering with a dull clatter.
/ A few heads turn in the crowded evening snack-bar.
/ An old man…

Good Friday - by Edwin Morgan

{ Poem }

Three o’clock. The bus lurches
/ round into the sun. ‘D’s this go –‘
/ he flops beside me – ‘right along Bath Street?
/ -…

Glasgow 5 March 1971 - by Edwin Morgan

{ Poem }

With a ragged diamond
/ of shattered plate-glass
/ a young man and his girl
/ are falling backwards into a shop-window.
/ The young man’s face
/ is bristling…

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