Eggplant.place

275d

The swine hangs on,
The swine hangs on to power,
The townsfolk mutter round the tower…

—Alan Jackson, “The Swine”
published in Salutations: Collected Poems 1960–1989 (Polygon, 1990)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/swine/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

The Swine
Alan Jackson

The swine hangs on,
The swine hangs on to power,
The townsfolk mutter round the tower:

“Roast him, toast him,
Thin his blood.
Try fire first,
Then try flood.

Char the timbers,
Crack the stone.
Make him marrow
In a splintered bone.

Then he’ll tumble,
Our hot meat.
Then we hack him.
Then we eat.”

ALT

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274d

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust
A mountain down and down.
Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,
Its silver paper crinkled and edged with rust…

—Norman MacCaig, “Climbing Suilven”
from BETWEEN MOUNTAIN AND SEA: Poems From Assynt (Birlinn, 2018)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/between-mountain-and-sea/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #climbing #hillwalking #Suilven #Sutherland #20thcentury #NormanMacCaig

Norman MacCaig
Climbing Suilven

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust
A mountain down and down.
Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,
Its silver paper crinkled and edged with rust.
My lungs say No;
But down and down this treadmill hill must go.

Parishes dwindle. But my parish is
This stone, that tuft, this stone
And the cramped quarters of my flesh and bone.
I claw that tall horizon down to this;
And suddenly
My shadow jumps huge miles away from me.

ALT

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272d

Gave yet another lecture. God, I’m boring.
Said all the same old things I’ve said before
With touches of “however-ing” and “therefore-ing”.
Dear God, it’s true, I’m just an ancient bore…

—Douglas Dunn, “Thursday”
published in THE NOISE OF A FLY (Faber, 2019)

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571333820-the-noise-of-a-fly/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #academia

Thursday
Douglas Dunn

Gave yet another lecture. God, I’m boring.
Said all the same old things I’ve said before
With touches of “however-ing” and “therefore-ing”.
Dear God, it’s true, I’m just an ancient bore.

If only I could tap my old exuberance,
High spirits that I plied in days before,
Then maybe I would find a kind deliverance
From the curse of being such a bloody bore.

For I’m the model of a modern academic.
I’m absolutely super at ennui.
I’m just stunning when it comes to a polemic,
And boredom’s snoredom’s what I guarantee.

I’m putting extra pennies in my pension.
Retirement beckons and the garden calls,
That beautiful, botanical dimension
Where boiler-suited pensioners scratch their balls.

But I’ve a problem. It’s called “work ethic”, so
I’ll slog on with the daily, dreary toil.
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, what a lousy way to go,
To work all day then burn the midnight oil.

ALT

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272d

I met a young man in a floppy hat
who stopped and smiled; he too had charm.
“My finches,” he said, “you are watching my finches.”

—Edwin Morgan, “Darwin in the Galapagos (1835 AD)”
published in A BOOK OF LIVES (Carcanet, 2007)

Charles Darwin was born #OnThisDay, 12 February, 1809

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549188/a-book-of-lives/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #Darwin #CharlesDarwin #DarwinDay #evolution

Edwin Morgan
Darwin in the Galapagos (1835 AD)

It was a cool day for the equator
as I clambered whistling over the clinker.
Clouds had brought a shower across the shore.
Grey black scoured and pitted rocks
glistened, and so did an iguana
eyeing me lazily with its wet crest bristling.
I saw the drag-marks of a giant tortoise –
what a dogged message thrusting into the thicket!
And the air was bright with birds, well, bright and dark –
green, brown, yellow – little birds, finches
flirting their few inches, drenching the freshness
with a spray of chatter and chirm, with a charm
peculiar to these islands, these Incantadas

I met a young man in a floppy hat
who stopped and smiled; he too had charm.
“My finches,” he said, “you are watching my finches.”
We sat on an old stump, I cherish the moment.
A man both ingenuous and ingenious,
a genius indeed, enthusiastic, shy,
well no, not really shy, but modest,
that was a type I could talk to for ever.

ALT

“These finches – all different,” he said.
“They have become separate species, and why is that?
They had some ancestor in Ecuador
but here their beaks have changed to match their food –
small seeds, big seeds, nectar, and do you know
there is one that makes a tool of cactus spines
to ferret grubs from tree-cracks? Oh
I can hardly sleep for excitement!
Nothing is immutable, life changes, we evolve.
Process is gorgeous, is it not!
Process is progress, don‘t you see!”

He taps my arm, his eyes shine. I agree.
Time breaks in great waves as we speak.
And look, a finch on the back of a tortoise
as if it had been listening
lifts its beak and begins a singing
so piercing it gives no end to that beginning.

ALT

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204d

You see that I will have to rise
And turn round and get back where
My running age will slow for a moment
To let me on. It is a colder
Stretch of water than I remember.

The curlew’s cry travelling still
Kills me fairly…

—WS Graham, “Loch Thom”

Today, 21 April, is World Curlew Day

1/4

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/loch-thom/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #curlews #WorldCurlewDay #birds

Loch Thom
by W. S. Graham

1

Just for the sake of recovering
I walked backward from fifty-six
Quick years of age wanting to see,
And managed not to trip or stumble
To find Loch Thom and turned round
To see the stretch of my childhood
Before me. Here is the loch. The same
Long-beaked cry curls across
The heather-edges of the water held
Between the hills a boyhood’s walk
Up from Greenock. It is the morning.

And I am here with my mammy’s
Bramble jam scones in my pocket.
The Firth is miles and I have come
Back to find Loch Thom maybe
In this light does not recognise me.

This is a lonely freshwater loch.
No farms on the edge. Only
Heath grouse-moor stretching
Down to Greenock and One Hope
Street or stretching away across
Into the blue moors of Ayrshire.

2

And almost I am back again
Wading in the heather down to the edge
To sit. The minnows go by in shoals
Like iron-filings in the shallows.

My mother is dead. My father is dead
And all the trout I used to know
Leaping from their sad rings are dead.

3

I drop my crumbs into the shallow
Weed for the minnows and pinheads.
You see that I will have to rise
And turn round and get back where
My running age will slow for a moment
To let me on. It is a colder
Stretch of water than I remember.

The curlew’s cry travelling still
Kills me fairly. In front of me
The grouse flurry and settle. GOBACK
GOBACK GOBACK FAREWELL LOCH THOM.

ALT

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1y

Rare, oh it's so rare
To meet somebody
Able to understand you
So deeply that
You never feel alone.

-Debora Radice

❤️

@poetry

#readersdon #writersdon #bookstodon #poetry #poem #poesia #poems #poesie #thoughts #pensieri #thought #pensiero #poemoftheday #thoughtoftheday #poesiadelgiorno #pensierodelgiorno

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203d

NEW COUNTRIES WILL
GROW UP ON GRACEFUL
PROMONTORIES WHERE A FEW
PEOPLE GATHER TOGETHER/
IN THEIR WORLD IT WILL BE
ILLEGAL TO OWN THE LAND…

Billboard
Robert Montgomery
Ostend Wall Piece. Crystal Ship Festival, 2016
Hahnemühle Photorag

Today, 22 April, is Earth Day.

https://www.robertmontgomery.org/new-gallery/hlltwglwt2au4gtsho09mz2afejeee

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EarthDay #EarthDay2026 #environment #environmentalism

A billboard, covering one wall of a five-storey block. In the foreground, three adults and one child are looking up at it. The billboard is black and carries white text in all capitals. The text reads:

NEW COUNTRIES WILL
GROW UP ON GRACEFUL
PROMONTORIES WHERE A FEW
PEOPLE GATHER TOGETHER/
IN THEIR WORLD IT WILL BE
ILLEGAL TO OWN THE LAND.
//AND THEY WILL MAKE
NEW LITERATURES IN
WHICH THE OIL AGE WILL
BE FORGOTTEN//
AND OUR CITIES WILL BE
FOLDED BACK INTO THE SAND/
AND THEY WILL NOT EVEN
REMEMBER HOW WE ONCE
HELD THE WORLD IN OUR
HANDS AND HOW WE
CRUSHED IT LIKE A BIRD
IN OUR HANDS

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1y

Beyond ruined houses and a past
eroded by salt and marram grass
stretch miles of sand dunes
where as kids we hurled ourselves
into space …

—Eleanor Livingstone, “Breathless”
from In the Event of Fire: New Writing Scotland 27 (ASLS, 2009)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Eleanor Livingstone
BREATHLESS

Beyond ruined houses and a past
eroded by salt and marram grass
stretch miles of sand dunes
where as kids we hurled ourselves
into space, legs and rebel cries
suspended in the air, landing

spread-eagled in cotton shorts
and bare legs, winded but alive.

On August evenings years later
under cover of dark we returned
stumbling in and out of rabbit holes
to find the sand sun-warmed, soft
and far enough removed for us
to lie as still and silent as the sea

but for fingers finding buttons
and the racket of our hearts.

ALT

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203d

bradan à linne
fadh à frith
craobh à coille

trì nithean
nach meàirle
ghabhail o nàdar…

—Aonghas MacNeacail, “trì nithean”
published in Laoidh an donais òig / Hymn to a young demon (Polygon, 2007)

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #EarthDay #EarthDay2026 #poem #poetry #landrights

aonghas macneacail
three things

salmon from the pool
deer from the moor
tree from the wood

three things
it’s no crime
to take from nature

grouse and salmon and deer
…and land and land and land

whose are they
who stole them

whose are they
who stole them

whose are they
who stole them

ALT

aonghas macneacail
trì nithean

bradan à linne
fadh à frith
craobh à coille

trì nithean
nach meàirle
ghabhail o nàdar

cearc-fhraoich is bradan is fiadh
… is fearann is fearann is fearann

cò leis iad
cò ghoid iad

cò leis iad
cò ghoid iad

cò leis iad
cò ghoid iad

ALT

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269d

The sun’s been tint for weeks. Deid maybe.
Likely drooned. Water’s aaplace, teemin doon
gutters and branders, rinnin aff the slates,
floodin pavements. Fowk near droon…

—Ken Morrice, “Foo Mony Cubits?”
published in Selected Poems (Keith Murray, 1991)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/foo-mony-cubits/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #Aberdeenshire #rain

Foo Mony Cubits?
Ken Morrice

The sun’s been tint for weeks. Deid maybe.
Likely drooned. Water’s aaplace, teemin doon
gutters and branders, rinnin aff the slates,
floodin pavements. Fowk near droon

waitin for the bus. Fit an onding!
Weet skites up yer troosers, drips doon yer sark.
Fa wis it prayed for rain? Lord, eneuch’s eneuch.
Caa back the sun, or help’s build an ark!

ALT

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270d

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love…

—Carol Ann Duffy, “Valentine”
published in A Red Rose or a Satin Heart: An Anthology of Scottish Love Poems, @canongatebooks 2010
💝

#Scottish #literature #ValentinesDay #poem #poetry #womenwriters #lovepoem #CarolAnnDuffy

Valentine
Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

ALT

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270d

When you go,
if you go,
and I should want to die,
there’s nothing I’d be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms…

—Edwin Morgan, “When You Go”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784109967

#Scottish #literature #ValentinesDay #LGBTQ #LGBTQplusHM #poem #poetry #Valentine #lovepoem #lovepoetry #EdwinMorgan

When you go
Edwin Morgan

When you go,
if you go,
and I should want to die,
there's nothing I’d be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms
in a trust so gentle
I let the darkening room
drink up the evening, till
rest, or the new rain
lightly roused you awake.
I asked if you heard the rain in your dream
and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.

ALT

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270d

O dastram, dastram,
Dastram Mòrag!
Rìbhinn bhuidh’, bhasdalach,
Leac-ruiteach ròsach…

—Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, bho “Moladh Mòrag”
published in DASTRAM/DELIRIUM: Selected Poems of Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, Versions by Taylor Strickland (Broken Sleep Books, 2023)

https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/taylor-strickland-dastram-delirium

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #ValentinesDay #poem #poetry #18thcentury #love #lovepoem #lovepoetry

bho Moladh Mòraig
Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair

O dastram, dastram,
Dastram Mòrag!
Rìbhinn bhuidh’, bhasdalach,
Leac-ruiteach ròsach;
A gruaidhean air lasadh
Mar an lasair-chlach dhathte,
’S a deud mar a’ sneachda,
Cruinn-shnaighte ’n dlùth òrdugh;
Ri Venus cho tlachdmhor
An taitneachdainn fheòlmhor,
Ri Dido cho maiseach,
Cho snasmhor ’s cho còrr rith’;
’S e thionnsgain dhomh caitheamh
’S a lùghdaich mo ràithean,
A’ bhallag ghrinn laghach
Chuir na gathan sa ’m fheòil-sa.

ALT

from Praised be Morag
translated by Taylor Strickland

Delirium! Delirium
from her, a girl blonde,
lurid: how she snuffs out
her own flint-spark glow,
and in one white bite
hewn from snow.
As sex and excess,
as body and beauty,
so Dido, so Venus,
so Morag ravishes
my seasons,
my genius
spent.
A girl with sharp agency
can pierce the heart
clean through.

ALT

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270d

O, love, love, love!
Love is like a dizziness;
It winna let a poor body
Gang about his biziness!

—James Hogg (1770–1835), “Love is like a dizziness” 💝

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poem #ValentinesDay #Valentine #18thcentury #19thcentury #humour

Love is like a dizziness
James Hogg

I lately lived in quiet ease,
An’ ne’er wished to marry, O!
But when I saw my Peggy’s face,
I felt a sad quandary, O!
Though wild as ony Athol deer,
She has trepann’d me fairly, O!
Her cherry cheeks an’ een sae clear
Torment me late an’ early, O!

O, love, love, love!
Love is like a dizziness;
It winna let a poor body
Gang about his biziness!

To tell my feats this single week
Wad mak a daft-like diary, O!
I drave my cart out owre a dike,
My horses in a miry, O!
I wear my stockings white an’ blue,
My love’s sae fierce an’ fiery, O!
I drill the land that I should pleugh,
An’ pleugh the drills entirely, O!

Chorus

Ae morning, by the dawn o’ day,
I rase to theek the stable, O!
I cuist my coat, an’ plied away
As fast as I was able, O!
I wrought that morning out an’ out,
As I’d been redding fire, O!
When I had done an’ look’d about,
Gudefaith, it was the byre, O!

Chorus

ALT

Her wily glance I’ll ne’er forget,
The dear, the lovely blinkin’ o’t
Has pierced me through an’ through the heart,
An’ plagues me wi’ the prinkling o’t.
I tried to sing, I tried to pray,
I tried to drown’t wi’ drinkin’ o’t,
I tried wi’ sport to drive’t away,
But ne’er can sleep for thinkin’ o’t.

Chorus

Nae man can tell what pains I prove,
Or how severe my pliskie, O!
I swear I’m sairer drunk wi’ love
Than ever I was wi’ whisky, O!
For love has raked me fore an’ aft,
I scarce can lift a leggie, O!
I first grew dizzy, then gaed daft,
An’ soon I’ll dee for Peggy, O!

Chorus

ALT

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270d

Here is a letter
come across the ocean
over the back of a world
curved like a whale…

—Hugh McMillan, “Letter”
published in THE OTHER CREATURES IN THE WOOD (Mariscat, 2014)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/letter/

#Scottish #literature #ValentinesDay #poem #poetry #lovepoem #lovepoetry #Valentine

Letter
Hugh McMillan

Here is a letter
come across the ocean
over the back of a world
curved like a whale.
I unwrap it, like tissue,
and sentences spill out,
as though the seal on a jar has broken,
coils of cornflower blue
on paper thin as shell.

I saw a sailor’s valentine once
in a museum in Nantucket Sound,
a mosaic of broken scallop
glued in a compass rose.
‘Writ from the heart’ it said.
Words come best like that:
in ink or blood,
when the source is from a major vein.

I read, and understand this much:
if ink sees off time and miles, then so must love.

ALT

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270d

Like the Idalian queene,
Her haire about her eyne,
With necke and brests ripe apples to be seene,
At first glance of the morne
In Cyprus gardens gathering those faire flowrs
Which of her bloud were borne…

—William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649), “Like the Idalian queene”

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/jacobean-parnassus/

#Scottish #literature #ValentinesDay #Valentine #17thcentury #earlymodern #poem #poetry #lovepoem #lovepoetry

“Like the Idalian queene”
by William Drummond of Hawthornden

Like the Idalian queene,
Her haire about her eyne,
With necke and brests ripe apples to be seene,
At first glance of the morne
In Cyprus gardens gathering those faire flowrs
Which of her bloud were borne,
I saw, but fainting saw, my paramours.
The Graces naked danc’d about the place,
The winds and trees, amaz’d,
With silence on her gaz’d,
The flowrs did smile, like those upon her face;
And as their aspine stalkes those fingers band,
That shee might read my case
A hyacinth I wisht mee in her hand.

ALT

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270d

There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine…

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

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784109967

#Scottish #literature #ValentinesDay #poem #poetry #LGBTQ #LGBTQplusHM #Valentine #lovepoem #lovepoetry #EdwinMorgan #20thcentury

Strawberries
Edwin Morgan

There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates

laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates

ALT

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270d

Whether the weather be dreich or fair, my luve,
if guid times greet us, or we hae tae face the worst,
ahint and afore whit will happen tae us…

—Jackie Kay, “A Lang Promise”
published in BANTAM (Picador, 2017)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/jackie-kay/bantam/9781509887927

#Scottish #literature #ValentinesDay #Valentine #poem #poetry #LGBTQ #LGBTQplusHM #lovepoem #lovepoetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #womenwriters #JackieKay

A Lang Promise
Jackie Kay

Whether the weather be dreich or fair, my luve,
if guid times greet us, or we hae tae face the worst,
ahint and afore whit will happen tae us:
blind in the present, eyes open to the furore,
unkempt or perjink, suddenly puir or poorly,
peely-wally or in fine fettle, beld or frosty,
calm as a ghoul or in a feery-farry,
in dork December or in springy spring weather,
doon by the Barrows, or on the Champs-Élysées,
at midnight, first licht, whether the mune
be roond or crescent, and yer o' soond mind
or absent, I'll tak your trusty haun
and lead you over the haw – hame, ma darlin.
I’ll carry ma lantern, and daur defend ye agin ony foe;
and whilst there is breath in me, I'll blaw it intae ye.
Fir ye are ma true luve, the bonnie face I see;
nichts I fall intae slumber, it’s ye swimming up
in all yer guidness and blitheness, yer passion.
You’ll be mine, noo, an’ till the end o’ time,
ma bonnie lassie, I’ll tak the full guid o’ ye
and gie it back, and gie it back tae ye:
a furst kiss, a lang promise, time’s gowden ring.

ALT

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203d

dear small daughter for a long time I did not write
what had already become past-tense was past-tense
and I am sorry I was not able to hold it as one might
in a dream hold a stream of water and sing it to sleep…

—Sheila Black, “Climate (7) (Past Tense)”
published in BREAK IN CASE OF SILENCE: New Writing Scotland 39 (ASL, 2021)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws39/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EarthDay #EarthDay2026 #climate #environment #environmentalism #climatechange

Sheila Black
Climate (7) (Past Tense)

dear small daughter for a long time I did not write
what had already become past-tense was past-tense
and I am sorry I was not able to hold it as one might
in a dream hold a stream of water and sing it to sleep
and I am sorry that I told you this image as if it were
in truth perdurable plangent and constant moon
over our seas when it is the shifting that matters.
dear small the birds the mockingbirds they sang
in the middle of the night and for this we cursed
them but then we came upon their nests in the black
of day noon when the sun is a diamond burning
through however much blue and the two of them
circled so tirelessly with their wings fanning the
turquoise eggs inside the nest of dead grass and we
understood we were not the only ones but even this
could not stop us from doing as we had done all
our lives long and the cars we pulled out of driveways
and the highways that took us into the buzzing
electric of buildings poured in dense concrete
and the cooling chemicals seeping and cycling
as though through calm artificial hearts and outside
unnoticed the ghost-blue of juniper needle and berry
and the ghost-rising of smoke from the fires we
claimed we had not set. dear daughter now that we
must use the past-tense for what we thought was ours
now as we move into the possible distance I open
my hand to give you this picture of two wings.

ALT

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1y

“Multitudes” is a #haiku from Library on Fire, my 3rd volume of #poetry available at https://www.nihtgengapress.com/product/library-on-fire

#books #indie #poem

Multitudes
I must remember
Within my darkness resides
Multitudes of stars

ALT

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1y

Thae laddies in the Celtic shirts,
a baker’s dozen
lumbering all the way to the summit cairn
the hot last Saturday of May
as larks trilled
and the loch-side braes released their midgies…

—Kathleen Jamie, “Ben Lomond”
published in THE BONNIEST COMPANIE (Picador, 2015)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kathleen-jamie/the-bonniest-companie/9781509801718

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Ben Lomond
Kathleen Jamie

Thae laddies in the Celtic shirts,
a baker’s dozen
lumbering all the way to the summit cairn
the hot last Saturday of May
as larks trilled
and the loch-side braes released their midgies …

Well, up at the raven-haunted trig-point
(as the sun shone bright o’er the whole lower Clyde)
they unfurled a banner,
and triumphant-sombre, ranked themselves behind it
for the photies,
‘R.I.P.’ it read, then the name of a wee boy

they’ll never meet again. Ach,
would the wean were playing fit-ba
on some bonny banks somewhere …

There’s no accounting for it, is there?
I mean the low road, and the high.

ALT

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203d

Change, change – that’s what the terns scream
down at their seaward rocks;
ﬂeet clouds and salt kiss –
everything else is provisional,
us and all our works…

—Kathleen Jamie, “Fianuis”
published in SELECTED POEMS (Picador, 2018)

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

#Scottish #literature #EarthDay #poem #poetry #EarthDay2026 #environment #environmentalism

Fianuis
by Kathleen Jamie

Well, friend, we’re here again —
sauntering the last half-mile to the land’s frayed end
to find what’s laid on for us, strewn across the turf —
gull feathers, bleached shells,
a whole bull seal, bone-dry,
knackered from the rut
(we knock on his leathern head, but no one’s home).

Change, change — that’s what the terns scream
down at their seaward rocks;
ﬂeet clouds and salt kiss —
everything else is provisional,
us and all our works.
I guess that’s why we like it here:
listen — a brief lull,
a rock pipit’s seed-small notes.

ALT

Edited 203d ago

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255d

On seeing Iran in the news, I want to say

my grandmother was called Nasreen,
that she died two years ago in Tabriz
and I couldn’t go to say goodbye,
that she knew nothing of power,
nuclear or otherwise…

—Marjorie Lotfi, “On seeing Iran in the news, I want to say”
published in THE WRONG PERSON TO ASK (Bloodaxe, 2024).

D.A. Prince reviews THE WRONG PERSON TO ASK on The Friday Poem:

https://thefridaypoem.substack.com/p/the-friday-poem-on-16th-may-2025

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Iran

Marjorie Lotfi
On seeing Iran in the news, I want to say

my grandmother was called Nasreen,
that she died two years ago in Tabriz
and I couldn’t go to say goodbye,
that she knew nothing of power,
nuclear or otherwise. I want to say
that the bonfires for Chahar Shanbeh Suri
were built by our neighbour’s hands;
as children we were taught to jump over
and not be caught by the flames. I want to say
my cousin Elnaz, the one born after I left,
has a son and two degrees in Chemistry,
and had trouble getting a job. I want to say
that the night we swam towards
the moon hanging over the horizon
of the Caspian Sea, we found ourselves
kneeling on a sandbar we couldn’t see
like a last gift. I want to say
I’m the wrong person to ask.

ALT

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1y

We needed it—and he stood there,
feet on the dry porch, saying rain,
cloud and skyful, the sound of drumming…

—Niall Campbell, “The Rainmaker”
published in POETRY (July/August 2020)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/153822/the-rainmaker

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #rain

The Rainmaker
by Niall Campbell

We needed it—and he stood there,
feet on the dry porch, saying rain,
cloud and skyful, the sound of drumming;

the bath trough in the garden listened,
white and bone dry, as he described
a bright wash across the dust fields,

the surest downpour, the flushed skin,
my soaked shirt, heavy as a bell.
Then off he went to the scorched fields,

humming, and weighing what we paid.
What did he say: prayer is moisture;
hope is a well—I didn’t care,

I wanted just the words from him—
what I couldn’t dare say—not there
beneath that sun, that blur of fire-sky.

My thoughts all thoughts of water, I
spun my head round—to hear the spill
of the word rain across the boards,

and nothing grew dark, nothing fell—
but something fell, and the ground took,
and something wild as garlic grew.

ALT

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1y

Love rules. Love laughs. Love marches. Love is the wolf that guards the gate.
Love is the food of music, art, poetry. It fills us and fuels us and fires us to create.
Love is terror. Love is sweat. Love is bashed pillow, crumpled sheet, unenviable fate…

—Edwin Morgan, “Love”
A poem for Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
published in A BOOK OF LIVES (Carcanet, 2011)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549188/a-book-of-lives/

#Scottish #literature #EdwinMorgan #poem #poetry #love #lovepoem #loveislove #Pride #PrideMonth #PrideMonth2025