from Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1990)
#ScottishWriters
Sssnnnwhuffffll? Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnfl hfl? Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g g… Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl f… gm grawwwww grf grawf awfgm graw g…
With a ragged diamond of shattered plate-glass a young man and his girl are falling backwards into a shop-… The young man’s face
Colour Poems was a suite of five… in an edition of 100 copies in May… using between two and twelve colou… They were printed by John Taylor… Images of the prints from this fol…
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…
Turn the kaleidoscope and the seve… Stretches, yawns, shakes the roof… Off its back in clumsy dollops, ge… Going, cries of ‘It’s freezing!’… Of tenement winter), puts some cof…
–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…
‘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…
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…
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…
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…
jollymerry hollyberry jollyberry merryholly happyjolly
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,
You don’t care about the wildness… my old gasometer! The kitchen wind… frames your gaunt frame, the black… stand firm, stand out, unyielding… of reds and purples in the dying d…
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,…