from The Second Life (Edinburgh University Press, 1968)
#Scottish #Scots
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…
Having split, with patience, my first pound note I kept the two halves in case of disbelief. They gave me a glow.
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…
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.
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,
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…
generation upon generation upon generation upon generation upon generation upon
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…
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…
Someone is born again. In the singing tower the rain Sweetened the song And all night long I heard a sad and muffled prayer,
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…
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…
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…
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…