from Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1990)
#ScottishWriters
‘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…
No smoke without you, my fire. After you left, your cigarette glowed on in my ash… and sent up a long thread of such… I smiled to wonder who would belie…
Having split, with patience, my first pound note I kept the two halves in case of disbelief. They gave me a glow.
“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…
A cup capsizes along the formica, slithering with a dull clatter. A few heads turn in the crowded ev… An old man is trying to get to his… from the low round stool fixed to…
Love rules. Love laughs. Love mar… is the wolf that guards the gate. Love is the food of music, art, po… fills us and fuels us and fires us… Love is terror. Love is sweat. Lo…
Kiss me with rain on your eyelashe… come on, let us sway together, under the trees, and to hell with…
Three o’clock. The bus lurches round into the sun. ‘D’s this go –… he flops beside me – 'right along… —Oh tha’s, tha’s all right, see I… got to get some Easter eggs for th…
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…
Sssnnnwhuffffll? Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnfl hfl? Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g g… Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl f… gm grawwwww grf grawf awfgm graw g…
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…
jollymerry hollyberry jollyberry merryholly happyjolly
–We come in peace from the third p… Would you take us to your leader? –Bawr stretter! Bawr. Bawr. Stre… –This is a little plastic model of the solar system, with working…
Push the boat out, compañeros, push the boat out, whatever the se… Who says we cannot guide ourselves through the boiling reefs, black a… the enemy of us all makes sure of…
Three particles lived in mystical… They made knife, fork, and spoon, and earth, sea, and sky. They made animal, vegetable, and m… and faith, hope, and charity.