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Trio

Edwin Morgan

Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights –
The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua.
And the three of them are laughing, their breath rises
in a cloud of happiness, and as they pass
the boy says, ‘Wait till he sees this but!’
The chihuahua has a tiny Royal Stewart tartan coat like a teapot-
holder,
the baby in its white shawl is all bright eyes and mouth like favours
in a fresh sweet cake,
the guitar swells out under its milky plastic cover, tied at the neck
with silver tinsel tape and a brisk sprig of mistletoe.
Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!
The vale of tears is powerless before you.
Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you
put paid to fate, it abdicates
under the Christmas lights.
Monsters of the year
go blank, are scattered back,
can’t bear this march of three.

– And the three have passed, vanished in the crowd
(yet not vanished, for in their arms they wind
the life of men and beasts, and music,
laughter ringing them round like a guard)
at the end of this winter’s day.


Edwin Morgan

From The Second Life  (Edinburgh University Press, c1968).
Also published in Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1990).

Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Carcanet Press.

Tags:

allegory babies Christmas dogs gifts Glasgow Glasgow musical instruments SQA National 5 texts winter youth

Learning Resources

SQA Key: National 5        Higher
  • Trio by Edwin Morgan Teaching Notes

    Our notes for this set text should help teachers and students alike.
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Edwin Morgan1920 - 2010

Morgan was Glasgow's first Poet Laureate 1999-2002, and the first to hold the post of Scots Makar, created by the Scottish Executive in 2004 to recognise the achievement of Scottish poets throughout the centuries.
More about Edwin Morgan

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