Eggplant.place

53d

Call it not vain:—they do not err,
Who say, that when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies…

—from Canto V, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) – died #OTD, 21 September

https://www.theotherpages.org/poems/canto05.html

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WalterScott #19thcentury #romanticism

Sir Walter Scott
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
Canto V

I.
Call it not vain;—they do not err,
Who say, that when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies:
Who say, tall cliff and cavern lone
For the departed Bard make moan;
That mountains weep in crystal rill;
That flowers in tears of balm distill;
Through his lov'd groves that breezes sigh,
And oaks, in deeper groan, reply;
And rivers teach their rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave

II.
Not that, in sooth, o'er mortal urn
Those things inanimate can mourn;
But that the stream, the wood, the gale
Is vocal with the plaintive wail
Of those, who, else forgotten long,
Liv'd in the poet's faithful song,
And with the poet's parting breath,
Whose memory feels a second death.
The Maid's pale shade, who wails her lot,
That love, true love, should be forgot,
From rose and hawthorn shakes the tear
Upon the gentle Minstrel's bier:
The phantom Knight, his glory fled,
Mourns o'er the field he heap'd with dead;
Mounts the wild blast that sweeps amain,
And shrieks along the battle-plain.
The Chief, whose antique crownlet long
Still sparkled in the feudal song,
Now, from the mountain's misty throne,
Sees, in the thanedom once his own,
His ashes undistinguish'd lie,
His place, his power, his memory die:
His groans the lonely caverns fill,
His tears of rage impel the rill:
All mourn the Minstrel's harp unstrung,
Their name unknown, their praise unsung.

ALT

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52d

Yestreen I heard a birdie sing
Inbye a bonnie beech tree hedge
As if it didnae ken nor care
Autumn wis hidin in the sedge…

—Sheena Blackhall, “Autumn IX”
via the Sottish Poetry Library

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/autumn-ix/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #autumn

Autumn IX
by Sheena Blackhall

Yestreen I heard a birdie sing
Inbye a bonnie beech tree hedge
As if it didnae ken nor care
Autumn wis hidin in the sedge

The daith o leaves is roon the neuk
It peints them yalla, reid an broon
An doon they’ll drap like faain rain
In waesome Autumn’s dowie croon

Sic cheenges cam tae great an sma
First ae grey hair, a nippin knee
The stert o auld age: clawin cleuks
That herald yer mortality

Autumn draws near, like cat wi moose
It winna stop, nor else devaul
A jeelin in a body’s banes
A cheenge, the turn frae warm tae caul

Noo blawin in the win, dry leaves
Like Simmer’s ghaists, ethereal
This is the Sizzen o the scythe
The nichts draw in, a mournin pall

ALT

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51d

Leave, leave your well-loved nest,
Late swallow, and fly away.
Here is no rest
For hollowing heart and wearying wing…

—Edwin Muir, “The Late Swallow”
first published in One Foot in Eden (Faber, 1956)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/late-swallow/

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

The Late Swallow
by Edwin Muir

Leave, leave your well-loved nest,
Late swallow, and fly away.
Here is no rest
For hollowing heart and wearying wing.
Your comrades all have flown
To seek their southern paradise
Across the great earth’s downward sloping side,
And you are alone.
Why should you cling
Still to the swiftly ageing narrowing day?
Prepare;
Shake your pinions long untried
That now must bear you there where you would be
Through all the heavens of ice;
Till falling down the homing air
You light and perch upon the radiant tree.

ALT

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51d

You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply, all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet pit you had made…

—Edwin Muir, “The Late Wasp”
from One Foot in Eden (Faber, 1956)

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

The Late Wasp
by Edwin Muir

You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply, all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet pit you had made, –
You and the earth have now grown older,
And your blue thoroughfares have felt a change;
They have grown colder;
And it is strange
How the familiar avenues of the air
Crumble now, crumble; the good air will not hold,
All cracked and perished with the cold;
And down you dive through nothing and through despair.

ALT

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51d

…and then katie who is very quiet most of the time
says no that wasn’t in the past because it’s happening
today it’s happening now she saw it on her phone
and that we’re all going to die tomorrow or the day after
and both rebeccas stand up waving their hands shouting
we’re not are we sir we’re not are we we’re not going to die
tomorrow are we sir…

—Mark Russell, “Drama”
in With Their Best Clothes On: New Writing Scotland 36

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws36/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #rapture

Mark Russell
Drama

so we’re doing the 1960s and leah who’s eleven
nearly twelve says what’s vietnam sir and scott
who has already turned twelve but looks about eight
says it’s in korea isn’t it sir and stephanie laughs
well sort of snorts and looks like she might pee herself
and i say no but it is in the far east like korea
and we look on the map i bought and tacked to the wall
and see why north vietnam was supported by china
but not quite why south vietnam was supported by the usa
and then rab whose name is robbie but he prefers rab
spots korea and says look there’s a north and a south
just like that vietnam hingy and thomas says
wasn’t there a war there too and aiden says shut up
twatface and I have to send him out to mrs lennon
and thomas says it again and we see that north korea
was supported by china and that the americans found
another way of fighting another war a long way from home
and then katie who is very quiet most of the time
says no that wasn’t in the past because it’s happening
today it’s happening now she saw it on her phone
and that we’re all going to die tomorrow or the day after
and both rebeccas stand up waving their hands shouting
we’re not are we sir we’re not are we we’re not going to die
tomorrow are we sir and I say no but what would we do if
we thought we were going to die tomorrow how would we feel
maybe we can make a play about it let’s get into groups

ALT

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48d

April, the last full fixture of the spring:
“Feet, Scottish, feet!” – they rucked the fear of God
Into Blackheath. Their club was everything…

—“London Scottish”, by Mick Imlah (1956–2009) – born #OTD, 26 September.
Published in THE LOST LEADER (Faber, 2008)

1/5

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/london-scottish/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #WW1 #rugby #LondonScottish

London Scottish
Mick Imlah

April, the last full fixture of the spring:
‘Feet, Scottish, feet!’ – they rucked the fear of God
Into Blackheath. Their club was everything:
And of the four sides playing that afternoon,
The stars, but also those from the back pitches,
All sixty volunteered for the touring squad,
And swapped their Richmond turf for Belgian ditches.
October: mad for a fight, they broke too soon
On the Ypres Salient, rushing the ridge between
‘Witshit’ and Messines. Three-quarters died.

Of that ill-balanced and fatigued fifteen
The ass selectors favoured to survive,
Just one, Brodie the prop, resumed his post.
The others sometimes drank to ‘The Forty-Five’:
Neither a humorous nor an idle toast.

ALT

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49d

Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of
in another country (its fierce sandstone
burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves
the monumental tower blocks of a later order
catching fire from the west as a plane comes in)…

—Gerrie Fellows, “Dream Cities”
published in The Body in Space (Shearsman, 2014)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/dream-cities/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Dream Cities
Gerrie Fellows

I
Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of
in another country (its fierce sandstone
burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves
the monumental tower blocks of a later order
catching fire from the west as a plane comes in)
has become in two months
a dream a nostalgia

For it is litter not grandeur
a muddied disturbance in a dirty river
a sullen reflection sliced by concrete
(the monumental pillars
and glorious boulevards of a later order)

Against the vivifying light
of the south the suburban avenues
of a world of space it is rain
rain and old world pallor

and beyond it
on the high points of Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis
(so early a door closing and opening)
the first snows of the winter

II
Early November and the city I parted from
in two months has become a dream technicolour
not quite Auckland or Christchurch
but a dream place of skyscrapers and heady blossom
stern waxy magnolia silk of almond and crab apple
A dream place but Christchurch as it was then
in mid-September Jane driving me to the airport
past gardens reeking with nectar

for there Spring has continued without me

And here I wake no longer at home

ALT

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45d

nuair a tha mi fhìn nam sheasamh
aig ceann Loch an Dala
’s mi a’ coimhead thar cuain geur
a’ deàrrsadh ’s a’ deàlradh
fo ghrian na sìorraidheachd
chan fhaic mi sgath dhen ghlasadh cheilteach…

—Iain S. Mac a’ Phearsain, “ceann Loch an Dala”
in Friends & Kangaroos: New Writing Scotland 17 (ASL, 1999)

#Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #poem #poetry #Islay #emigration

ceann Loch an Dala
Iain S. Mac a’ Phearsain

nuair a tha mi fhìn nam sheasamh
aig ceann Loch an Dala
’s mi a’ coimhead thar cuain geur
a’ deàrrsadh ’s a’ deàlradh
fo ghrian na sìorraidheachd
chan fhaic mi sgath dhen ghlasadh cheilteach
a’ ciaradh Ile
na eilean shìthichean faoin
ach soitheach mo shinnsearan
a’ triall dhan iar
Gilleasbaig is Eòghann
a’ cur cùl ri Cill’ Nèimh
an aghaidh leis a’ ghaoith
’s an làmhan air a’ chliathaich
blàth ’s cha mhòr air chrith.

ALT

head of Loch Indaal
John Scott MacPherson

personally, when I stand
at the head of Loch Indaal
and look out
over a razor-sharp sea
shining and radiating
under an everlasting sun
I see none of the Celtic twilight
reducing Islay
to an island of vacant faeries
but my ancestors’ ship
heading for the west
Archibald and Hugh
turning backs on Kilnave
facing downwind
their hands on the gunwhales
warm and almost shaking.

ALT

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45d

As your lover on waking recounts her dreams,
unruly, striking, unfathomable as herself,
your attention wanders
to her moving lips, throat, those slim shoulders
draped in a shawl of light…

—Andrew Greig, “A Long Shot”
published in This Life, This Life (Bloodaxe, 2007)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/long-shot/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #golf #RyderCup

A Long Shot
by Andrew Greig

As your lover on waking recounts her dreams,
unruly, striking, unfathomable as herself,
your attention wanders
to her moving lips, throat, those slim shoulders
draped in a shawl of light, and what’s being christened here
is not what is said but who is saying it,
the overwhelming fact
she lives and breathes beside you another day.

Other folks’ golf shots being even less interesting
than their dreams, I’ll be brief:
as she spoke I thought of a putt yesterday at the 4th,
as many feet from the pin as I am years from my birth,
several more than I am from my death –
one stiff clip, it birled across the green,
curved up the rise, swung down the dip
like a miniature planet heading home,

and the strangest thing is not what’s going to happen
but your dazed, incredulous knowing it will,
long before the ball reaches the cup then drops,
that it’s turned out right after all,
like waking one morning to find yourself
unerringly in love with your wife.

ALT

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46d

Back here, the iron line crosses future, past:
Then my father will surely be seen

Trekking the sodden, lonely land,
Weekenders, together –

—Jackie Kay, “Rannoch Loop”
published in BANTAM (Picador, 2017)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #walking #hiking

Rannoch Loop
by Jackie Kay

Back here, the iron line crosses future, past:
Then my father will surely be seen

Trekking the sodden, lonely land,
Weekenders, together –

Or trudging through the ancient pine woods,
The musk smell of red deer,

My father, here on the moor,
Years and years after he’s gone,

Held by the land’s callused hands.
Och – big hikes across time, lochs, bogs,

September weekend or Easter, far flung,
Doon by Loch Ericht, on the west side

To the old crofter’s burnt-out croft,
Still a magnificent doss, and he’ll doss there,

(Twelve men to the wee hoose)
And rest, rest, till finally refreshed.

ALT

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45d

I want answers, but there are only the wild geese
Calling, high in the almost-dark, bearing south,
And me, stopped short, clutching a bag of groceries
On the doorstep of my not-quite home…

—Susan Mansfield, “Bearing South”
from The Rooftop Busker: New Writing Scotland 33 (ASL, 2015)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #autumn

Susan Mansfield
BEARING SOUTH

I want answers, but there are only the wild geese
Calling, high in the almost-dark, bearing south,
And me, stopped short, clutching a bag of groceries
On the doorstep of my not-quite home.
I feel the calm of their inner compass
And wonder if this is what we mean by certainty,
A deft arrowhead of wingbeats
In tune with the turning wind, the changing light,
A geography in their feathery breasts
Older than the names of continents.
A journey without thought of parting or arrival,
Only the press of forward motion,
The urgency and risk of it all,
A brief touch-down in stubble fields, then on,
The pulse of fellow flyers in the slipstream
And the clear voices calling in the dark:
I am here, I am alive,
I am here, I am alive.

ALT

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44d

Faar’s Baabie Jeanie’s loon? The aal wife hersel
Stans treeshin hame the milkers at the ley park yett…

—“War: 1939–1945”, by Flora Garry (1900–2000) – born #OTD, 30 September
Published in FROM THE LINE: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945

1/2

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/from_the_line/

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #warpoetry #WW2

Flora Garry
War: 1939–1945

‘Faar’s Baabie Jeanie’s loon? The aal wife hersel
Stans treeshin hame the milkers at the ley park yett.
Faa caas the mornin cairt an fordals neeps an strae,
Wi waages up an risin an fee’d folk sae ull to get?
Baabie Jeanie’s Jockie, faar’s he?

An yon swack hashin chiel in Willum Sinclair’s shop?
He heeld ye oot o langour, sae joco an kin’ly wi’t.
‘Noo, lassie’ to the grunnies: ‘Weel, dearie’ to the quines,
He’s a want ahin the coonter, Willum’s sic a strunge breet.
I miss a news wi yon lad. Faar’s he?

An Droggie’s clivver dother? She could mak her fadder’s peels.
Nae hoven wyme or clocher, nae beelin, hack or strain
Bit she could ease; an fin royt nackets tummelt greetin at their play
She’d rowe up their bleedit sair bits, sen them duncin furth again.
The bairns likit Chrissie. Faar’s she?

An Cyaarnadellie’s foreman? I’ the clear Spring nichts
He trystit wi the banker’s deemie up at the market place.
Noo, she’s skycin roun the gable-eyn, her leen, i the early gloam,
Wi a muckle cwyte aboot her an a graavit ower her face.
Cyaarnadellie’s foreman, faar’s he?’

‘Speir at the waarslin tides, the desert saans, the caal starlicht.
They ken far.’

ALT

treeshin: calling; enticing
yett: gate
fordals: stores
swack: agile
hashin: hustling
heeld ye: held you
languor: boredom
joco: jovial
quines: young girls
strunge breet: surly chap
droggie: the chemist
peels: pills
hoven wyme: swollen stomach
clocher: cough
beelin: festering sore
royt nackets: boisterous children
trystit: met regularly, 'dated'
deemie: maid, general servant
skycin: scurrying
her leen: alone
cwyte: coat
graavit: scarf
speir: enquire

ALT

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27d

My father passed with his penny letters
Through closes opening and shutting like legends
When barbarous with gulls
Hamnavoe’s morning broke…

—“Hamnavoe”, by George Mackay Brown (1921–1996) – born #OTD, 17 Oct

“I have never seen his poetry sufficiently praised.”
—Seamus Heaney

A 🎂 🧵

You can listen to George Mackay Brown read his poem “Hamnavoe” online via the Poetry Archive

1/7

https://poetryarchive.org/poem/hamnavoe/

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

Hamnavoe
George Mackay Brown

My father passed with his penny letters
Through closes opening and shutting like legends
When barbarous with gulls
Hamnavoe's morning broke

On the salt and tar steps. Herring boats,
Puffing red sails, the tillers
Of cold horizons, leaned
Down the gull-gaunt tide

And threw dark nets on sudden silver harvests.
A stallion at the sweet fountain
Dredged water, and touched
Fire from steel-kissed cobbles.

Hard on noon four bearded merchants
Past the pipe-spitting pier-head strolled,
Holy with greed, chanting
Their slow grave jargon.

A tinker keened like a tartan gull
At cuithe-hung doors. A crofter lass
Trudged through the lavish dung
In a dream of corn-stalks and milk.

In the Arctic Whaler three blue elbows fell,
Regular as waves, from beards spumy with porter,
Till the amber day ebbed out
To its black dregs.

ALT

The boats drove furrows homeward, like ploughmen
In blizzards of gulls. Gaelic fisher girls
Flashed knife and dirge
Over drifts of herring,

And boys with penny wands lured gleams
From the tangled veins of the flood. Houses went blind
Up one steep close, for a
Grief by the shrouded nets.

The kirk, in a gale of psalms, went heaving through
A tumult of roofs, freighted for heaven.
And lovers Unblessed by steeples lay under
The buttered bannock of the moon.

He quenched his lantern, leaving the last door.
Because of his gay poverty that kept
My seapink innocence
From the worm and black wind;

And because, under equality's sun,
All things wear now to a common soiling,
In the fire of images
Gladly I put my hand
To save that day for him.

ALT

Edited 27d ago

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27d

“I remember being excited by its ingenious allegory, allusions to nuclear holocaust behind something timeless, almost heraldic. I was drawn, surely, to the unusual combination of spiritual reach and humour, as well as recognising the poet’s extraordinary gift for characterisation in miniature.”

—John Greening on discovering George Mackay Brown

https://wildcourt.co.uk/discovering-george-mackay-brown/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Orkney

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43d

For want o luve we live on hate,
For want o Heven praise the State,
For want o richts we worship rules,
For want o gods the glibbest fules…

—Sydney Goodsir Smith, “Prolegomenon: The Deevil’s Waltz”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS: an anthology of Scots poetry
from the first & second waves
of the Scottish Renaissance (ASL, 2017)

Happy #Scotstober!

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

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Scots #Scotslanguage #poem #poetry #Scotstober #richts

Sydney Goodsir Smith
Prolegomenon
The Deevil’s Waltz

Rin an rout, rin an rout,
Mahoun gars us birl about,
He skirls his pipes, he stamps his heel
The globe’s gane gyte in a haliket reel.

There, the statesman’s silken cheats,
Here, the bairnless mither greits,
There, a tyrant turns the screw,
Here, twa luvers’ broken vows.

Enemies out, enemies in,
Truth a hure wi the pox gane blinn,
Nou luvers’ lips deny luve’s name
An get for breid a chuckie-stane,

We kenna hert, we kenna heid,
The deevil’s thirled baith quick an deid,
Jehovah snores, and Christ himsel
Lowps in the airms o Jezebel.

ALT

The sweit that rins frae his thorned brou
Is black as the staunan teats o his cou
In the waltz o tears, an daith, an lies,
Juliet’s fyled wi harlotries.

O luve itsel at Hornie’s lauch
Skeers lik a caunel i the draucht,
The dance is on, the waltz o hell,
The wund frae its fleean skirts is snell.

It whups black storm frae lochan’s calm,
Sets banshees in the house o dwaum,
Gars black bluid spate the hert o me
—An watters guid-sirs’ barley bree!

A few damned feckless fanatics
Wad halt the borneheid dance o Styx,
Their cry o truth the whirlwind reaps,
For pity’s deid, and mercy sleeps.

Orpheus alane dow sauve frae deid
His ravished Bride gin but she’d heed—
Ay, truth an luve like Albyn’s life
Hing wi a threid, kissed be a knife.

Ilk derkenin owre some huddered toun
The pipes an fiddles screich an boom,
The cauldron’s steered by Maestro Nick
Wi a sanct’s shin-bane for parritch-stick.

He lauchs his lauch, the angels greit
Wi joy as they dine on carrion meat;
Ablow, bumbazed, dumfounered cods,
We seek the starns in dubs an bogs.

Oor ingyne’s deaved, oor mous are shut,
Oor saul contract like a runkled nut,
Een cannae see the trees for the wuid
An hert is cauld for want o bluid.

ALT

For want o luve we live on hate,
For want o Heven praise the State,
For want o richts we worship rules,
For want o gods the glibbest fules.

Obey, Obey; ye maunna spier!
(Libertie’s disjaskit lear!)
While Cloutie pipes it’s crime tae think,
—It’s taxed e’en higher nor the drink!

O, rin an rout, we birl about,
Tae the rhythm o the Deil’s jack-boot,
Black as auld widdie-fruit, Mahoun
Bestrides a kenless mappamound.

ALT

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42d

Today, 2 October, is National Poetry Day in the UK. The theme is “play”.

“Necessity is not the mother of invention; play is”
—Ian D. Suttie

It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees and the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading and blurred with rain…

—John Burnside, “Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012”
published in BLACK MIDDENS: New Writing Scotland 31 (ASL, 2013)

https://poetrysociety.org.uk/projects/national-poetry-day/2025-play/

#Scottish #literature #nationalpoetryday #play #poem #poetry

John Burnside
Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012

“Necessity is not the mother of invention; play is”
—Ian D. Suttie

It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees and the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading and blurred with rain,
the wire fence studded with fleece
and indelible traces
of polythene wrapping; marrowfat clogging the drains
on the road that runs out to the coast
then disappears.
A last bleed of gold in the west, like a Shan Shui painting,
then darkness.

The animals are gone
that hunted here:
wolves coming down from the hills, that
immaculate hunger,
rumours of bear and cat, quick
martens and raptors.
The rain is darker now,
though not so black,
oil-iridescent, streaked with the smell of lard
– it gets late early out here; though late, out here,
has a different meaning:

stars in the road
and the absence of something more
than birchwoods or song,
pallet fires, tyre-tracks,
grubbed fields clouded with grease
and palm oil, hints
of molasses and lanolin, tarpaper,
iron filings.
A narrow band of weather on the road,
then houses; though we scarcely think of them
as that.

ALT

I remember a meadow at dusk
in another rain
(and this is nostalgia now); I remember
I stood in a wind like gossamer and watched
three roe fawns and a doe
come quietly, one by one, through the silvering grasses,
wary, but curious, giving me just enough space
to feel safe,
their watchfulness reminding me of something
lost, a creaturely
awareness I could only glimpse

in passing.
That meadow is gone, and dusk
isn’t dusk any more
– or not out here –
just miles of tract and lay-by on the way
to junkyards and dead allotments,
guard dogs on tether,
biomass, factory outlets,
the half-light of ersatz dairies petering out
on rotting fields
of rape and mustardseed.

We’ve been going at this for years:
a steady delete
of anything that tells us what we are,
a long
distaste for the blood warmth and bloom
of the creaturely: local
fauna and words for colour, all the shapes
of ritual and lust
surrendered where they fell, beneath a fog
of smut and grime and counting-house
as church, the old gods

ALT

buried undead beneath the rural sprawl
that bears their names, or wandering the hills
of Lammermuir and Whitelee, waiting out
the rule of Mammon, till the land returns
– with or without us –
chainlink going down
to bindweed, drunken
thistles in a sway
of wind and goldfinch on the dead estates, fat
clusters of moss
and gentian, broken

tarmac with new shoots
of coltsfoot breaking through
like velvet, till the darkness of the leaf
unfurls into a light we could have known
but failed to see
by choosing not to find
the kingdom-at-hand:
this order;
this dialectic;
this mother of invention,
ceaseless play.

ALT

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42d

Tha i mar bharaille de sgadan saillte:
chan eil agad ach do chròg
a stobadh ann, agus dòrlach a thoirt a-mach,
reamhar is tiugh leis a’ bhuntàta…

—Aonghas Phàdraig Caimbeul, “Bàrdachd”

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #NationalPoetryDay

Bàrdachd
Aonghas Phàdraig Caimbeul

Tha i mar bharaille de sgadan saillte:
chan eil agad ach do chròg
a stobadh ann, agus dòrlach a thoirt a-mach,
reamhar is tiugh leis a’ bhuntàta.

Stob
an t-ìm na mheasg
agus tha cuirm agad: Eliot is Donnachadh Bàn,
le do làmhan rùisgte. Seachain
forca is sgian: fàg sin aig na sgoilearan.

Nuair a thig thu gu bonn a’ bharaille
sgròb na craicinn ri chèile,
dean ràth chnàimhean,
lìon lannan
‘s tilg sin thairis
dìreach mu àm reothairt.

Ma ghlacas tu adag,
thoir leat i: nuair tha an sgadan
gann, nì easgann fraighte fhèin a’ chùis
san acras.

ALT

Poetry
Translator: Angus Peter Campbell

It’s like a barrel of salt herring:
you only have to stick your paw
in, and lift a handful out,
thick and juicy with the tatties.

Pile
the butter in the middle
and you have a feast: Eliot and Duncan Bàn,
eaten with your bare fingers. Don’t use
a knife and fork: leave that to the scholars.

When you reach the bottom of the barrel
scrape the skins together,
make a raft of bones,
a net of fine filament,
and fling it over the side
just after the spring tide.

If you catch a common haddock,
take it anyway: in the absence
of a fat herring even eels
taste fine when deep-fried.

ALT

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42d

Something near to true
night-darkness. The children
are playing the Plinky-Boat –
a xylophone made
from a reclaimed yoal –
built for flexibility in a coarse
sea…

—Jen Hadfield, “The Plinky-Boat”
published in BYSSUS (Picador, 2014)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/jen-hadfield/byssus/9781447241102

#Scottish #literature #Shetland #NationalPoetryDay #poem #poetry #play

The Plinky-Boat
Jen Hadfield

‘the present is a fine line […] a puff of air would destroy it’
—Gaspar Galaz, ‘Nostalgia de la Luz’

Something near to true
night-darkness. The children
are playing the Plinky-Boat –
a xylophone made
from a reclaimed yoal –
built for flexibility in a coarse
sea, you can tell it fledged
with ease, just blushed
from boat to instrument,
transpiring streams
of these hoarse night-
notes. For its copper pipes
are cut to breadth exactly
so the boat’s beam is
its sotto voce and two rills
of rising pitch run
into stern and stem to
the harmonic of each
hinnyspot – the point
the boards of gunwales
and stem flow together.
I don’t know what it is
about this place that things
metaflower so readily
into their present selves.

ALT

The instrument’s a boat,
the notes unresonant
and discs of thin light
swarm over the pipes
from the boys’ headtorches.
Perhaps we heard seals
broaching in the harbour
as they answered the girls’
handclapping game –
I doubt they moaned
in their haunted wise –
here was everything –
words lost, as I’m trying
to say, their echo, that
yodel into past and future.
The poem wouldn’t exist,
but we couldn’t stay.

ALT

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26d

Wanting to go,
all the leaves want to go
though they have achieved
their kingly robes.

Weary of colours,
they think of black earth,
they think of
white snow…

—Norman MacCaig, “Autumn”
published in The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Birlinn, 2009)

https://birlinn.co.uk/2022/10/21/poem-of-the-week-autumn-by-norman-maccaig/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #NormanMacCaig #autumn

Autumn
Norman MacCaig

Wanting to go,
all the leaves want to go
though they have achieved
their kingly robes.

Weary of colours,
they think of black earth,
they think of
white snow.

Stealthily, delicately
as a safebreaker
they unlock themselves
from branches.

And from their royal towers
they sift silently down
to become part of
the proletariat of mud.

ALT

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26d

Autumn, and the nights are darkening.
The old lady tells us of her past once more.
She muses on the days she spent nursing

at ten shillings a month…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “The Old Lady”
published in NEW COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2011)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549607/new-collected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #autumn

The Old Lady
Iain Crichton Smith

Autumn, and the nights are darkening.
The old lady tells us of her past once more.
She muses on the days she spent nursing

at ten shillings a month. ‘And what exams!
I could understand anything in those days.
What summers we had then, what lovely autumns.’

And so I imagine her cycling to her work
among the golden leaves, down avenues,
to hospitals which were disciplined and stark

with hard-faced matrons, doctors jovial
with an authority that was never quizzed,
while grizzled Death suckled at his phial,

and autumn glowed and died, outside the ward,
and girlishly she saw it fade in red
in sky and sheet, and evening was barred
with strange sweet clouds that hung above the bed.

ALT

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26d

“A man’s a man for a’ that” – how does he know?
Traipsing with his plough, the rural hero,
Swaggering down the lea-rigs, talking to mice…

—“James Macfarlan”, by Edwin Morgan
published in VIRTUAL & OTHER REALITIES (Carcanet, 1997)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857543476/virtual-and-other-realities/

#Scottish #literature #Scotstober #poem #poetry

James Macfarlan
by Edwin Morgan

“A man’s a man for a’ that” – how does he know?
Traipsing with his plough, the rural hero,
Swaggering down the lea-rigs, talking to mice,
Sweating his sickly verses to entice
Lassies he’d never see again, strutting
Through the salons in his best breeches, rutting
In a cloud of claret, buttonholing
Lord This, sweet-talking Doctor That, bowling
His wit down levees, bosoms, siller quaichs –
D’ye think he’s ever heard the groans and skraighs
Of city gutters, or marked the shapes that wrap
Fog and smoke about them as if they could hap
Homelessness or keep hunger at bay? What,
Not heard or seen, but has he even thought
How some, and many, and more than many, survive,
Or don’t survive, on factory floors, or thrive
Or fail to thrive by foundry fires, or try
To find the words – sparks scatter and bolts fly –
That’s feeble – to show the new age its dark face?
The Carron Ironworks – how he laughed at the place,
Made a joke of our misery, passed on
To window-scratch his diamond-trivia, and swan
Through country-house and customs-post, servile
To the very gods from which he ought to resile!
“Liberty’s a glorious feast,” you said.
Is that right? Wouldn’t the poor rather have bread?
Burns man, I’m hard on you, I’m sorry for it.
I think such poetry is dangerous, that’s all.
Poetry must pierce the filthy wall
With cries that die on country ways. The glow
Of bonhomie will not let the future grow.

ALT

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39d

Teacher, scholar,
he had worked a true task when all alive…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “For Angus MacLeod”
Published in New Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2011)

Today, 5 October, is World Teachers Day. In this poem Iain Crichton Smith, himself a teacher, celebrates the life of a former Headmaster of Oban High School

1/4

https://www.unesco.org/en/days/teachers

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldTeachersDay #teaching #teachers #education #school #schools

Iain Crichton Smith
For Angus MacLeod
Headmaster, and Editor of Gaelic Poems

Today they laid him in the earth’s cold colour,
a man from Lewis with his seventy-five
years struck from his head. Teacher, scholar,
he had worked a true task when all alive,

building a school, elucidating texts.
The Gaelic shone quite clearly in his bones.
A casket filled with ashes had been mixed
with filtered sunlight and the small stones.

A useful life with pupils and with poems:
sufficient honours (his humour asked no more)
he takes his place in many minds and rooms.
Without their knowing it, his patient care

instructs far hands to turn a new lever,
a voice to speak in a mild-mannered tone.
The deeds we do reverberate forever.
Inveterate justice weighs the flesh and bone.

His best editions are some men and women
who scrutinise each action like a word.
The truest work is learning to be human
definitive texts the poorest can afford.

ALT

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38d

Love is all you need: Remembering The Kingis Quair

Alan Riach discusses The Kingis Quair – a poem attributed to King James I of Scots (1394–1437), & described by C.S. Lewis as “the first modern book of love”

https://www.thenational.scot/news/17372009.love-is-all-you-need-remembering-the-kings-quair/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #lovepoetry #medieval #Scots #Scotslanguage #15thcentury #Scotstober