Eggplant.place

283d

When the day-birds have settled
in their creaking trees,
the doors of the forest open
for the flitting
drift of deer
among the bright croziers
of new ferns
and the legible stars…

—Robin Robertson, “What the Horses See at Night”
published in SAILING THE FOREST: Selected Poems (Picador, 2014)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/robin-robertson/sailing-the-forest/9781447231554

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #naturewriting #naturepoetry

What the Horses See at Night
by Robin Robertson

When the day-birds have settled
in their creaking trees,
the doors of the forest open
for the flitting
drift of deer
among the bright croziers
of new ferns
and the legible stars;
foxes stream from the earth;
a tawny owl
frisks the long meadow.
In a slink of river-light,
the mink’s face
is already slippery with yolk,
and the bay’s
tiny islands are drops
of solder
under a drogue moon.
The sea’s a heavy sleeper,
dreaming in and out with a catch
in each breath, and is not disturbed

ALT

by that plowt – the first
in a play of herring, a shoal
silvering open
the sheeted black skin of the sea.
Through the starting rain, the moon
skirrs across the sky dragging
torn shreds of cloud behind.
The fox’s call is red
and ribboned
in the snow’s white shadow.
The horses watch the sea climb
and climb and walk
towards them on the hill,
hear the vole
crying under the alder,
our children
breathing slowly in their beds.

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268d

goodk kkkkk unjam ingwe nches lass? start again goodk
lassw enche sking start again kings tart! again sorry…

—Edwin Morgan, “The Computer’s Second Christmas Card”
published in COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 1990)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857541885/collected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #concretepoetry #20thcentury #computing #EdwinMorgan

(written in bright green text, in a monospaced font on a black background, to emulate an old CRT computer monitor; the text is divided up into blocks of five letters each)

The Computer's Second Christmas Card
by Edwin Morgan

goodk kkkkk unjam ingwe nches lass? start again goodk
lassw enche sking start again kings tart! again sorry
goodk ingwe ncesl ooked outas thef? unmix asloo kedou
tonth effff rewri tenow goodk ingwe ncesl asloo kedou
tonth effff fffff unjam feast ofsai ntste venst efanc
utsai ntrew ritef easto fstep toeso rryan dsons orry!
start again good? yesgo odkin gwenc eslas looke dout?
doubt wrong track start again goodk ingwe ncesl asloo
kedou tonth efeas tofst ephph phphp hphph unjam phphp
repea tunja mhphp scrub carol hphph repea tscru bcaro
lstop subst itute track merry chris tmasa ndgoo dnewy
earin 1699? check digit banks orryi n1966 endme ssage

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266d

Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky…

—Edwin Muir, “Scotland’s Winter”
from ONE FOOT IN EDEN (Faber, 1956)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #EdwinMuir #winter

Scotland’s Winter
by Edwin Muir

Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky.
The water at the mill
Sounds more hoarse and dull.
The miller’s daughter walking by
With frozen fingers soldered to her basket
Seems to be knocking
Upon a hundred leagues of floor
With her light heels, and mocking
Percy and Douglas dead,
And Bruce on his burial bed,
Where he lies white as may
With wars and leprosy,
And all the kings before
This land was kingless,
And all the singers before
This land was songless,
This land that with its dead and living waits the Judgment Day.
But they, the powerless dead,
Listening can hear no more
Than a hard tapping on the sounding floor
A little overhead
Of common heels that do not know
Whence they come or where they go
And are content
With their poor frozen life and shallow banishment.

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267d

doun riven the tint braith
mawkin scribbles owre the snaw
wee arles o sun-daith
water warstles wechty, slaw …

—Kate Armstrong, “Pantoum fer Winter”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2016)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #pantoum #Scots #Scotslanguage #winter

Kate Armstrong
Pantoum fer Winter

doun riven the tint braith
mawkin scribbles owre the snaw
wee arles o sun-daith
water warstles wechty, slaw

mawkin scribbles owre the snaw
sternies bou tae the mockrife mune
water warstles wechty, slaw
nou the taid an puddock sloum

sternies bou tae the mockrife mune
houlets hunker saft as haar
nou the taid an puddock sloum
grippit fest in dwinin lair

houlets hunker saft as haar
winter’s nieve is cauld an sterk
grippit fest in dwinin lair
aa maun learn tae dree the mirk

winter’s nieve is cauld an sterk
doun riven the tint braith
aa maun learn tae dree the mirk
wee arles o sun daith

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267d

Some December midnight
Christ, lord, lie warm in our byre.
Here are stars, an ox, poverty enough.

—George Mackay Brown, “A Child’s Calendar”
published in FISHERMEN WITH PLOUGHS (Hogarth Press 1971)

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Christmas #poem #poetry #Orkney

A Child's Calendar
George Mackay Brown

No visitors in January.
A snowman smokes a cold pipe in the yard.

They stand about like ancient women,
The February hills.
They have seen many a coming and going, the hills.

In March Moorfea is littered
With knock-kneed lambs.

Daffodils at the door in April,
Three shawled Marys.
A lark splurges in galilees of sky.

And in May
A russet stallion shoulders the hill apart.
The mares tremble.

The June bee
Bumps in the pane with a heavy bag of plunder.

Strangers swarm in July
With cameras, binoculars, bird books.

He thumped the crag in August,
A blind blue whale.

September crofts get wrecked in blond surges.
They struggle, the harvesters.
They drag loaf and ale-kirn into winter.

In October the fishmonger
Argues, pleads, threatens at the shore.

Nothing in November
But tinkers at the door, keening, with cans.

Some December midnight
Christ, lord, lie warm in our byre.
Here are stars, an ox, poverty enough.

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246d

it wis January
and a gey dreich day
the first day Ah went to the school…

—Liz Lochhead, “Kidspoem/Bairnsang”
published in A CHOOSING: The Selected Poems of Liz Lochhead (Polygon, 2017)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/a-choosing/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #scots #language #MinorityLanguages

Kidspoem/Bairnsang
Liz Lochhead

it wis January
and a gey dreich day
the first day Ah went to the school
so my Mum happed me up in ma
good navy-blue napp coat wi the rid tartan hood
birled a scarf aroon ma neck
pu’ed oan ma pixie an my pawkies
it wis that bitter
said noo ye’ll no starve
gie’d me a wee kiss and a kid-oan skelp oan the bum
and sent me aff across the playground
tae the place Ah’d learn to say
it was January
and a really dismal day
the first day I went to school
so my mother wrapped me up in my
best navy-blue top coat with the red tartan hood
twirled a scarf around my neck
pulled on my bobble-hat and mittens
it was so bitterly cold
said now you won’t freeze to death
gave me a little kiss and a pretend slap on the bottom
and sent me off across the playground
to the place I’d learn to forget to say
it wis January
and a gey dreich day
the first day Ah went to the school
so my Mum happed me up in ma
good navy-blue napp coat wi the rid tartan hood
birled a scarf aroon ma neck
pu’ed oan ma pixie an ma pawkies
it wis that bitter.

Oh saying it was one thing
but when it came to writing it
in black and white
the way it had to be said
was as if you were posh, grown-up, male, English and dead.

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263d

He has gone down into darkness at the wrecked end of the year
And is lying, gaberlunzie, in the needled nest of frost…

—Gerry Cambridge, “Processional at the Winter Solstice”
published in Notes for Lighting a Fire (HappenStance Press 2012)

https://happenstancepress.com/index.php/shop/product/4-notes-for-lighting-a-fire-gerry-cambridge/category_pathway-12

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #midwinter #solstice

Processional at the Winter Solstice
by Gerry Cambridge

He has gone down into darkness at the wrecked end of the year
And is lying, gaberlunzie, in the needled nest of frost.
The arctic thrushes call for him although he cannot hear,

And the worm too understands him in the chilled grip of its dark,
And the ptarmigan in blizzards where no thought is worth a crumb,
And treecreepers in shivering puffs in Wellingtonias’ bark.

Shop windows glint in city lights like ice and sky, but still
No tinsel gifts can touch him, freed to silence like a stone’s;
His face is white as paper’s white in miles-high midnight chill.

He lies as plain as frost-dust where those starving thrushes call,
And his lime and ray-struck armoury could hardly be less small
On the anvil of beginnings in the sun’s gate on the wall.

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265d

Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights –
The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua…

—Edwin Morgan, “Trio”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784109967/centenary-selected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #Christmas #BuchananStreet #EdwinMorgan

Trio
by Edwin Morgan

Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights –
The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua.
And the three of them are laughing, their breath rises
in a cloud of happiness, and as they pass
the boy says, “Wait till he sees this but!”
The chihuahua has a tiny Royal Stewart tartan coat like a teapot-holder,
the baby in its white shawl is all bright eyes and mouth like favours in a fresh sweet cake,
the guitar swells out under its milky plastic cover, tied at the neck with silver tinsel tape and a brisk sprig of mistletoe.
Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!
The vale of tears is powerless before you.
Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you
put paid to fate, it abdicates
under the Christmas lights.
Monsters of the year
go blank, are scattered back,
can’t bear this march of three.

– And the three have passed, vanished in the crowd
(yet not vanished, for in their arms they wind
the life of men and beasts, and music,
laughter ringing them round like a guard)
at the end of this winter’s day.

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245d

This was the year before the year
that collapsed on us, a roof brought down by snow.
The year of riding through abandoned stations
on the riverside line that never crossed the river
but danced among warehouses, silos and factories (deceased)
beside battleships settling into red mud…

—Pippa Little, “This Was the Year”
published in OVERWINTERING (Carcanet, 2012)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781906188061/overwintering/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

This Was the Year
by Pippa Little

This was the year before the year
that collapsed on us, a roof brought down by snow.
The year of riding through abandoned stations
on the riverside line that never crossed the river
but danced among warehouses, silos and factories (deceased)
beside battleships settling into red mud.
This was the year that, too exhausted to sleep,
I boiled down the pink and ivory and blue of other women’s hands
into a single grey slab. The soap pot next the soup,
fumes of gardenia and bone.
This was the year we were always coming home.
Three steps and a garden where the splayed trike in the frost said
better to have careless love than none at all.
This was the year before the year
I found out that we are fused from lightning, our bodies
maps across which electrical storms flare
and move on. This was the year
extremely far rooftops and lit windows
seen from a plane flying its late night mission
had their glow zapped by pinball fire.
This was the year I closed the door underneath the porch light
and stood out on the first of the three front steps, listening.
Our children’s beds expecting their bodies
to come warm them like small fires
but growing cold with waiting.

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223d

It is late January and at last the snow.
I lie back dreaming about Glencoe
as fluent, hungry, dressed in red,
you climb up and over me…

—Andrew Greig, “The Winter Climbing”
Published in Getting Higher: The Complete Mountain Poems (Polygon, 2011)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/getting-higher-2/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #mountains #mountaineering #climbing #winter #Glencoe

The Winter Climbing
Andrew Greig

It is late January and at last the snow.
I lie back dreaming about Glencoe
as fluent, hungry, dressed in red,
you climb up and over me. That passion
claimed the darkest, useless months
for risk and play. You rise
up on me, I rise through you ...

The shadowed face of Aonach Dubh
where Mal first took me climbing
and as we clanked exhausted, happy,
downwards through the dark, I asked
“What route was that?” “Call it
what you want – it’s new.”

You reach the top and exit out;
from way above, your cry comes down.
The rope pulls tight. What shall we call
this new thing we’re about?
These days we live in taking
care and chances. Why name it?
My heart is in my mouth as I shout Climbing ...

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263d

Angus at midwinter
or near as makes no odds –
faint shadows raxed
over fields of dour earth,

every fairmer’s fenceposts
splashed with gold.

—Kathleen Jamie, “Solstice II”
in SELECTED POEMS (Picador 2018

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kathleen-jamie/selected-poems/9781509882953

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #midwinter #solstice

Solstice II
by Kathleen Jamie

Here comes the sun
summiting the headland – pow!
straight through the windows of the 10.19
– and here's us passengers,
splendid and blinking
like we're all re-born,
remade exactly, and just where we left off:
the students, the toddler, the tattoo'd lass,
the half dozen roustabouts
headed off-shore
cracking more beers
and more jokes.
Angus at midwinter
or near as makes no odds –
faint shadows raxed
over fields of dour earth,

every fairmer's fenceposts
splashed with gold.

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245d

Snaw is bluffertin’ the toun,
Gurly wunds are roustin’ roun’,
Peety fowk in broken shoon
This winter nicht…

—Helen Burness Cruickshank (1886–1975), “Song of Pity for Refugees”
published in Collected Poems (Reprographia, 1971)

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #poem #poetry #refugees #winter

Song of Pity for Refugees
by Helen Burness Cruickshank

Snaw is bluffertin’ the toun,
Gurly wunds are roustin’ roun’,
Peety fowk in broken shoon
This winter nicht.

Peety help the weary auld,
Claes nor fire to fend aff cauld,
Hoose nor ha’ them safe to hauld
This winter nicht.

Peety wham in a’ the warld
Fortune fell through hell has harled,
Hungert, hameless, broken, marled,
This winter nicht.

Peety men withooten kin,
Ne’er a freend to cry them ben,
Nane their deein’ sauls to sain
This winter nicht.

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244d

Up in the morning’s no for me,
Up in the morning early;
When a’ the hills are cover’d wi’ snaw,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly…

—“Up in the Morning Early”, by Robert Burns – poet of the people 🫡

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/morning-early/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #18thCentury #RobertBurns #winter

Up in the Morning Early
by Robert Burns

Cauld blaws the wind frae east to west,
The drift is driving sairly;
Sae loud and shrill I hear the blast,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly.

CHORUS
Up in the morning’s no for me,
Up in the morning early;
When a’ the hills are cover’d wi’ snaw,
I’m sure its winter fairly.

The birds sit chittering in the thorn,
A’ day they fare but sparely;
And lang’s the night frae e’en to morn,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly.

CHORUS
Up in the morning’s no for me,
Up in the morning early;
When a’ the hills are cover’d wi’ snaw,
I’m sure its winter fairly.

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258d

chimney-soaked sunset
mirth struggles for a foothold
these slippery hopes

#DailyHaikuPrompt #vss365 #haiku #senryu #poetry #writing #poem

View over a hedge line across a plowed field, the sky in fading blue, sunset light orange at the horizon where a single tree is silouetted under the setting sun. Rays shoot out from 4 different points on the sun, the longest of the rays reaching back over the hedge line to the foreground.

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146d

the rain has stopped
but still it’s falling
under the trees

—Alan Spence
published in CLEAR LIGHT, @canongatebooks 2012

https://canongate.co.uk/books/94-clear-light/

#Scottish #literature #InternationalHaikuPoetryDay #poem #poetry #haiku #HaikuDay

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181d

In order to help you overcome your fear
of what the Chinese call the Lord of Distress,
I suggest you try confrontation therapy…

—Brian McCabe, “Triskaidekaphobia”
published in ZERO (Polygon, 2009)

Happy Friday the 13th to all who celebrate

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Fridaythe13th #triskaidekaphobia

Triskaidekaphobia
Brian McCabe

In order to help you overcome your fear
of what the Chinese call the Lord of Distress,
I suggest you try confrontation therapy.

So, on Black Friday, the day of Christ’s death –
and yes, the thirteenth apostle betrayed him –
which also, as you have said, happens to be

you and your wife’s thirteenth anniversary,
of which you live in so much dread,
we really have the ideal opportunity.

I want you to reserve a room in the Pyramid Hotel.
Unlike many, it has the floor – before you go in,
you must count them, from the ground –

and a room number 1313. On that date it is free
– I have checked – and you will find the rates
to be very reasonable indeed.

You must invite eleven guests – no more, no less.
The centrepiece at dinner should be a pineapple –
count the rows of scales sloping up to the right.

I want you to request that any flowers sent
have the requisite number of petals:
black-eyed Susans; corn marigolds, ragwort.

Read the Cabala to your guests – the section
about Paradise, the Heavenly Fountains,
the Gates of Mercy, the Rivers of Balsam.

This will be your phobia’s last supper.
I’m afraid I can’t – I’ll be away.
Good luck and happy anniversary.

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146d

Beneath a Mona Lisa smile you’re splayed
for pinning. I recall the callipered
shadow of Vitruvian Man, from caverns
and hollowed trees to this small page…

—Morag Smith, “Renaissance Bat”
from DON’T. EVEN. ASK. TOO. HOT. New Writing Scotland 42 (ASL, 2024)

Today, 17 April, is Bat Appreciation Day 🦇

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws42/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #bats #BatAppreciationDay

Morag Smith
RENAISSANCE BAT

(From a watercolour, circa 1790, Asian Lesser False
Vampire)

Beneath a Mona Lisa smile you’re splayed
for pinning. I recall the callipered
shadow of Vitruvian Man, from caverns
and hollowed trees to this small page.
Notice the artist’s worship of your thumb-claws
– they hold up sails of wings that can make
the air water for swimming in. Deep time
echoes in those downy caves of ears.
We drew pyramids and squares, you listened,
carried the pox for fifty million years,
ate our locust plagues and held within
your matchstick bones what’s near forgotten:
that God’s an insectivorous vertebrate
thirty-four grammes in weight.

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243d

Lourd on my hert as winter lies
The state that Scotland’s in the day.
Spring to the North has aye come slow
But noo dour winter’s like to stay
For guid,
And no’ for guid!

—Hugh MacDiarmid, “Lourd on My Hert”
published in SELECTED POETRY (New Directions, 1993)

https://www.ndbooks.com/book/selected-poetry/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #HughMacDiarmid #Scots #Scotslanguage #winter

Lourd on My Hert
by Hugh MacDiarmid

Lourd on my hert as winter lies
The state that Scotland’s in the day.
Spring to the North has aye come slow
But noo dour winter’s like to stay
For guid,
And no’ for guid!

O wae’s me on the weary days
When it is scarce grey licht at noon;
It maun be a’ the stupid folk
Diffusin’ their dullness roon and roon
Like soot
That keeps the sunlicht oot.

Nae wonder if I think I see
A lichter shadow than the neist
I’m fain to cry: “The dawn, the dawn!
I see it brakin’ in the East.”
But ah
– It’s juist mair snaw!

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146d

In dusk, from in among the walnut tree
and its bearing down upon the damaskina,
although we never see the bat unwrap
like a sticky sweet from the paper…

—WN Herbert, “The Bat”
from OMNESIA (Bloodaxe, 2013)

https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poems/poem/103-22731_THE-BAT

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #bats #BatAppreciationDay

THE BAT
W. N. Herbert

In dusk, from in among the walnut tree
and its bearing down upon the damaskina,
although we never see the bat unwrap
like a sticky sweet from the paper

of suddenly frictionless voiceless wings,
it begins to bi-, to trilocate, to be
anywhere at once in air's old film, wavering
with half-seen insects – it's in the field,

the garden, even underneath the canopy
of vineleaves that, by day, shades the little patio.
We watch the sky a dropping sun's turned gray
after an hour of lemon, mango, watermelon –

though this still lets some light be gleaned
through a wing like a sallow, puffed-out cheek,
a torch shone through a bloodless hand,
but gone in the second you understand

as though showing how exactly we must leave
each day – and do – a gathering of senses, sights
too small or intricate to count as insight,
too brief to form what we'd call belief.

The bat, that master of departures, is lost
to night, forgetting as it misses each leaf
and every branch: a figure of omnesia,
the way the world desires to be the past.

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1y

‘Something or Other’

Patience in a nutshell:
I have none
And everything’s electric
Sizzling with ambition
Lost in seconds passing
Drags away my soul
Each breath a tiny whisper
Heaving life into the night
Scattered dreams a haunting
Train-wreck crashing through
My desiccated brainwaves
Superheated with emojis
Vapourware a hunted bunyip
Seeking hard the pathway forward
Shards of glass all flaming hot,
Yet beyond that hell a fountain

#poem #poetry #poetrycommunity

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171d

Hear my prayer, O non-existent God,
accept these cries into thy nothingness,
thou, who never leaves poor men unblessed
by your false comfort…

—Don Paterson, “Atheist Prayer”
from THE ARCTIC (Faber, 2023)

Today, March 23, is Atheist Day

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571338191-the-arctic/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #atheism #AtheistDay

Atheist Prayer
Don Paterson

after Miguel de Unamuno

Hear my prayer, O non-existent God,
accept these cries into thy nothingness,
thou, who never leaves poor men unblessed
by your false comfort. Your perfect fraud
was all I ever yearned for, my old friend:
when you withdraw, my memory is assailed
by every silly song and fairy tale
my mother read to sweeten the day’s end.

How great you are, my absent god! So rare
and boundless, an idea less than air:
O look how very thin the world has grown
in trying to meet you. For you and you alone
I suffer, Lord; for you, I die and die –
since were you to exist … Then so might I.

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242d

The laverock rises owe blin waas
At ane wi the great North wun
At the heid o hecht…

—“The Heid o Hecht” by Duncan Glen, born #OTD, 11 Jan, 1933. Starting out as an apprentice printer, he became a poet, designer, editor, publisher, & academic

1/3

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/

#Scotish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #Scots #Scotslanguage

Duncan Glen
The Heid o Hecht

The laverock rises owe blin waas
At ane wi the great North wun
At the heid o hecht. Here The Stuarts huntit the reid deer
And I look doun at that sma grey toun
Wi its fremmit Freench-like Palace
Whaur aince kings walkt wi thochts
O the saft wuns o the Sooth;

Saft wuns that cam lown north
Bringin the bricht bird o simmer
That has but a glisk o that cauld yin
Wha moves baith gress and pine. There
By toom waas whaur aince kings sat
Wi braw sudroun tapestries hidin
The grey stane that cam straucht
Frae the quarries o this hill.

Stanes and laverock risin heich
In the cauld wun that kens nae
Swallow, gouk, or that simmer swarm
O flees. And the great stanes are bare.
Nae claith or burnin wud that can
Gie and tak frae that cauld hunter oot
On the hill wi the laverock wha passes
Owre aw at the heid o hecht.

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The burn was big wi’ spate,
An’ there cam’ tum’lin doon
Tapsalteerie the half o’ a gate,
Wi’ an auld fish-hake an’ a great muckle skate,
An’ a lum hat wantin’ the croon!

—David Rorie, “The Lum Hat Wantin’ the Croon”

As things start to thaw in the north-east, mind how ye go…

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #song #20thcentury #humour #Scots #Scotslanguage