Seven Decades - by
At forty I woke up, saw it was day,
found there was love, heard a new beat, heard Beats,
sent airmail solidarity to Saõ
Paulo’s poetic-concrete revolution
ageing
George Square - by
My seventy-seven-year-old father
/ put his reading glasses on
/ to help my mother do the buttons
/ on the back of her dress.
/ ‘What a pair…
The Old Fisherman - by
Greet the bights that gave me shelter,
/ they will hide me no more with the horns of their forelands.
/ I…
On a Cat, Ageing - by
He blinks upon the hearth-rug,
/ And yawns in deep content,
/ Accepting all the comforts
/ That Providence has sent.
/
/ Louder he…
The Fiddler - by
A fine player was he …
/ ‘Twas the heather at my knee,
/ The Lang Hill o’ Fare
/ An’ a reid rose-tree,
/ A bonnie dryin’…
What the Auld Fowk are Thinkin - by
The bairns i’ their beds, worn oot wi’ nae wark,
/ Are sleepin, nor ever an eelid winkin;
/ The auld fowk…
Kom til Jorda - by
For et par år sida ramla en duggdråpe ut av et av
/ kronbladene i liljetapeten i det avstengte rommet i…
Setting Out - by
The gravestones still weigh the same.
/ No-one has altered the dates.
/
/ No-one asks why I’ve come back
/ again. To see not graves but
/
/ that…
June the Second - by
it is dawn and my wife is coming to bed
/ and she has been watching a film about the life of…
Poem - by
I walk at the land’s edge,
/ turning in my mind
/ a private predicament.
/ Today the sea is indigo.
/ Thirty years an adult –
/ same mind,…
Grey Hairs - by
As I sleep my scalp labours on
/ weaving glittering strands
/ from the dead fibres of my hair.
/
/ Never so noticeable…
Beautiful mind - by
The things inside his mind are blurring
/ and drifting like snow, they are settling
/ into great heaps, burying whatever lay there.
/ May there…