from Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1990)
#ScottishWriters
The scaffolding has gone. The sky… Clanking poles and thudding planks… let light through At last, hammered the cage door of… bantering dusty brickie crew,
The year goes, the woods decay, an… many a summer dies. The swan on Bingham’s pond, a ghost, comes… It goes, and ice appears, it holds… bears gulls that stand around surp…
Others are open. You give a high… as you win the Prospero stakes, an… bury your books deeper than any au… could find them sound or unsound. Did you ‘die a papist’, hate dogs,…
Sssnnnwhuffffll? Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnfl hfl? Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g g… Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl f… gm grawwwww grf grawf awfgm graw g…
Oh for Christ’s sake gie the sign… Alchemist my erse, but he’s hermle… He’ll never blaw us up in oor beds… If makkin wings is his new-fanglt… It’ll no cost the earth– a wheen o…
‘What would you put in the foundat… for future generations?’ ‘A horses… a ballet shoe, a horseshoe crab, a… a sheriff’s star, a pacemaker, a t… a ladybird, a love-letter, a laugh…
“A man’s a man for a’ that” – how… Traipsing with his plough, the rur… Swaggering down the lea-rigs, talk… Sweating his sickly verses to enti… Lassies he’d never see again, stru…
It is not of this world, and yet i… And that is how it should be. Strong light hits back and the arm… Coming from where we cannot see, Ought not to see, another dimensio…
Guten Morgan was a limited editio… ‘Less is not better’ ‘Poetry comes and goes’ ‘Rainbow’ ‘Fled’
There is no beginning. We saw Lew… laid down, when there was not much… and volcanic fires; watched long s… faults; laughed as Staffa cooled.… bruises were grated off like nutme…
I knew his name fine, but couldn’t… He was Norway’s answer to Robert… among the sophisticates, and their… Do you not know who I mean? I hav… to check it up, but gave a lecture…
jollymerry hollyberry jollyberry merryholly happyjolly
Having split, with patience, my first pound note I kept the two halves in case of disbelief. They gave me a glow.
In a little rainy mist of white an… we sat under an old tree, drank tea toasts to the powdery mo… undrunk got merry, played catch with the empty flask, on the pine…
Coming up Buchanan Street, quickl… a young man and two girls, under t… The young man carries a new guitar… the girl on the inside carries a v… and the girl on the outside carrie…