from Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1990)
#ScottishWriters
Having split, with patience, my first pound note I kept the two halves in case of disbelief. They gave me a glow.
‘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…
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…
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…
It was so fine we lingered there f… The long broad streets shone stron… Sunset blinded the tremble of the… we watched from, dazed the helipor… The mile-high buildings flashed, f…
At ten I read Mayakovsky had died… learned my first word of Russian,… watched my English teacher poke hi… with a well-chewed HB and get the… to join his easy mocking of my ess…
–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…
A Far Cool Beautiful Thing, Van… blue The Dear Green Plaice Glasgow Homage to Zukofsky
“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…
Kiss me with rain on your eyelashe… come on, let us sway together, under the trees, and to hell with…
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…
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,…
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…
I am waiting for you. I have been travelling all morning… and not eaten. I am lying at the edge of the bush on a dusty path that leads from th…
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…