Eggplant.place

81d

efturryd geenuz iz speel
iboot whut wuz right
nwhut wuz rang
boot this nthat
nthi nix thing
a sayzti the bloke
nwhut izzit yi caw
yir joab jimmy…

—Tom Leonard, “liason coordinator”
from GHOSTIE MEN (Galloping Dog Press, 1980)

https://www.tomleonard.co.uk/online-poetry-and-prose/liasoncoordinator.html

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #Glaswegian #Scots #Scotslanguage #TomLeonard

efturryd geenuz iz speel
iboot whut wuz right
nwhut wuz rang
boot this nthat
nthi nix thing

a sayzti the bloke
nwhut izzit yi caw
yir joab jimmy

am a liason co-ordinator
hi sayz oh good ah sayz
a liason co-ordinator

jist whut this erria needs
whut way aw thi unimploymint
inaw thi bevvyin
nthi boayz runnin amock
nthi hoossyz fawnty bits
nthi wummin n tranquilisers
it last thiv sent uz
a liason co-ordinator

sumdy wia digree
in fuck knows whut
get peyd fur no known
whut thi fuck ti day way it

ALT

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81d

one of those with quiet, naturally restrained, insistently monotoned voices

with that little selfcontained smile, always going on about Respect for History and the Abiding Sense of the Traditional…

—Tom Leonard, “The Elect”
published in MARKINGS 27, 2008

https://www.tomleonard.co.uk/online-poetry-and-prose/the-elect.html

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

The Elect
Tom Leonard

one of those with quiet, naturally restrained, insistently monotoned voices

with that little self-contained smile, always going on about Respect for History and the Abiding Sense of the Traditional

who want all poets to have a sense of “basic form” and who are always quoting Yeats’s “Under Ben Bulben” about poets having to Learn Their Trade and not be All Out of Shape from Toe to Top

who think this has nothing to do with Yeats’s views on eugenics – "the better stocks have not been replacing their numbers” – “The results are already visible in the degeneration of literature” –

who complain of people with voices yclept loud, varied, opinionated, up and down, showy, the insufferably “engaged”, the political johnnies, the performance crowd, the “disastrous influence of the sixties”

who hate poets who carry electrical appliances and who cling fast to Aristotle’s dictum that a poet is a poet insofar as they have a command of metaphor

who do not want to know all this stuff about “the page as a field of semantic tension” or blethers about “the connection between lower case and democracy” or pontificatory nonsense about “the punctuation of spacing” and “the reader being present at the shared point of articulation”

one of them leant over and said to me quietly

do you know if the 44 bus still goes to Knightswood

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81d

“Don’t you find
the use of phonetic urban dialect
rather constrictive?”

—Tom Leonard, “Fathers and Sons”
published in Intimate Voices: Selected Work, 1965–1983 (Galloping Dog Press, 1984)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

FATHERS AND SONS
Tom Leonard

I remember being ashamed of my father
when he whispered the words out loud
reading the newspaper.

“Don’t you find
the use of phonetic urban dialect
rather constrictive?”
asks a member of the audience.

The poetry reading is over.
I will go home to my children.

ALT

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81d

this is thi
six a clock
news thi
man said n
thi reason
a talk wia
BBC accent
iz coz yi
widny wahnt
mi ti talk
aboot thi
trooth wia
voice lik
wanna yoo
scruff. if
a toktaboot
thi trooth
lik wanna yoo
scruff yi
widny thingk
it wuz troo.
jist wanna yoo
scruff tokn.

—Tom Leonard, “The Six O’Clock News”
🎂 Tom Leonard, 22 Aug 1944

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #Glaswegian #voice #Scots #Scotslanguage #TomLeonard

The Six O’Clock News
Tom Leonard

this is thi
six a clock
news thi
man said n
thi reason
a talk wia
BBC accent
iz coz yi
widny wahnt
mi ti talk
aboot thi
trooth wia
voice lik
wanna yoo
scruff. if
a toktaboot
thi trooth
lik wanna yoo
scruff yi
widny thingk
it wuz troo.
jist wanna yoo
scruff tokn.
thirza right
way ti spell
ana right way
to tok it. this
is me tokn yir
right way a
spellin. this
is ma trooth.
yooz doant no
thi trooth
yirsellz cawz
yi canny talk
right. this is
the six a clock
nyooz. belt up.

ALT

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80d

Starlings return
black commas spill from the sky
festooning rooftops
like coal-coloured bunting…

—Nalini Paul, “August”
published in The Flight of the Turtle: New Writing Scotland 29 (ASL, 2011)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Nalini Paul
AUGUST

Starlings return
black commas spill from the sky
festooning rooftops
like coal-coloured bunting.

The blue, yellow and red have gone.
The County Show outshone Shopping Week
by a well-ploughed mile
and heralded winter.

Black cattle, smudges of soot
in the browning fields.

Sunlight spreads
like toffee melting;
blinds drawn by nine.

The wind comes home again
with rain for company
whips the sea back to life
fills the streets with dark song.

Storms wipe the slate of the year clean
as if summer had never been.

But the last few midge bites
still itch.

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80d

Brutalised Africans made Glasgow
amazing disgrace, how sweet the civic amnesia…
mansions without plaques
unrevised street names
no memorial.

—Kate Tough, “People Made Glasgow”

“A contemporary sickness has its roots in unredressed wrongs”

Today, 23 August, is the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade & its Abolition

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/people-made-glasgow/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #slavery #abolition #SlaveryHistory #RememberSlavery

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79d

John Maclean (1879–1923), socialist & Red Clydesider, was born #OTD, 24 August

Listen to Hamish Henderson’s “The John Maclean March”, sung by Dick Gaughan (1972)
✊

1/3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uAs5cyy5EM

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #song #folksong #socialism #Scotland #workingclass #history #labourhistory #RedClydeside #HamishHenderson #JohnMaclean

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59d

Tweed: conversations I
27 Sept, Galashiels. Free, ticketed.

Join Connecting Threads at Little Art Hub, Galashiels, for a session of poetry reading, riverside conversation & printmaking in celebration of Tweed, a new full-length poem in Scots by Borders-based poet Craig Aitchison.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tweed-conversations-i-tickets-1635888339059

#Scottish #literature #poetry #printmaking

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76d

…but witness these brittle August
bluebells casting seed,
like tiny hearts in caskets
tossed onto a battle ground.

—Kathleen Jamie, “Reliquary”
published in THE TREE HOUSE (Picador, 2004)

1/4

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kathleen-jamie/the-tree-house/9781509891825

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #history

Reliquary
by Kathleen Jamie

The land we inhabit opens to reveal
the stain of ancient settlements,
plague pits where we’d lay
our fibre-optic cables;

but witness these brittle August
bluebells casting seed,
like tiny hearts in caskets
tossed onto a battle ground.

ALT

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76d

A CHAOS OF LIGHT
New Writing Scotland 43
Ed. by Kirstin Innes, Chris Powici & Niall O’Gallagher

“writing that unsettles and challenges, that questions assumptions and gets us to look at, when it feels so much less painful to look away… A rich, boisterous, tender, charming, angry, sorrowful, gleeful mix”

Available now from all good bookshops!

@bookstodon
@writingcommunity

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws43/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #shortstories #shortfiction #newwriting #writingcommunity

Book cover

A Chaos of Light
New Writing Scotland 43

Edited by Kirstin Innes and Chris Powici
Gaelic Editor: Niall O'Gallagher

A dark purple-black cover. The book title is in pale yellow. A beam of white light rises up from the foot of the cover, forming the letter I in LIGHT. It hits the bottom of the capital A in CHAOS – represented by an upwards-pointing solid triangle – and a burst of colour emerges from the right-hand side of the triangle, as if light was passing through a prism. Multicoloured sparkles rise from the right-hand edge of the cover where the spectrum of light hits it.

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73d

Some days were running legs and joy
and old men telling tomorrow would be
a fine day surely: for sky was red
at setting of sun between the hills…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Some days were running legs”
published in Deer on the High Hills (Carcanet 2021)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800170940/deer-on-the-high-hills/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #IainCrichtonSmith

‘Some days were running legs’
Iain Crichton Smith

Some days were running legs and joy
and old men telling tomorrow would be
a fine day surely: for sky was red
at setting of sun between the hills.

Some nights were parting at the gates
with day’s companions: and dew falling
on heads clear of ambition except light
returning and throwing stones at sticks.

Some days were rain flooding forever the green
pasture: and horses turning to the wind
bare smooth backs. The toothed rocks rising
sharp and grey out of the ancient sea.

Some nights were shawling mirrors lest the lightning
strike with the eel’s speed out of the storm.
Black the roman rooks came from the left squawking
and the evening flowed back around their wings.

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75d

In his darkroom he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

—Carol Ann Duffy, “War Photographer”
published in COLLECTED POEMS (Picador, 2019)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/carol-ann-duffy/collected-poems/9781447231752

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #photography #journalism

War Photographer
by Carol Ann Duffy

In his darkroom he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black-and-white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.

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72d

Old gods and goddesses who have lived so long
Through time and never found eternity,
Fettered by wasting wood and hollowing hill,
You should have fled our ever-dying song…

—Edwin Muir, “To the Old Gods”
📷 Ballachulish Figure, c728–524 BCE

https://www.nms.ac.uk/discover-catalogue/a-mysterious-iron-age-figure-from-ballachulish

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #archaeology #IronAge #EdwinMuir

To the Old Gods
by Edwin Muir

Old gods and goddesses who have lived so long
Through time and never found eternity,
Fettered by wasting wood and hollowing hill,

You should have fled our ever-dying song,
The mound, the well, and the green trysting tree.
They have forgotten, yet you linger still.

Goddess of caverned breast and channeled brow,
And cheeks slow hollowed by millennial tears,
Forests of autumn fading in your eyes,

Eternity marvels at your counted years
And kingdoms lost in time, and wonders how
There could be thoughts so bountiful and wise

As yours beneath the ever-breaking bough
And vast compassion curving like the skies.

ALT

An early Iron Age wooden carved figure of a woman or girl, standing in front of a wall of woven twigs and branches. The figure is blackened with age, and the wood has twisted and elongated due to the lack of proper preservation when it was discovered in a peatbog in 1880. Carved from a single block of alder, at the time of its discovery it stood 1.4 metres tall (just under 5 feet). The figure has a large, heavy head with inset quartz pebbles for eyes, large ears, a distinct nose and mouth and a round chin.

ALT

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61d

Many thanks to the art lover from the United Kingdom for purchasing a greeting card of the haikuart design of @MarjoleinRotsteeg (haiku) and me (watercolor painting) of

A Robin follows - https://www.redbubble.com/de/shop/ap/167744632

#thankyou #sale #haiku #poem #poetry #robin #garden #gardening #gardener #MastoArt #art #painting #FediArt #FediGiftShop #arte #MastodonArt #contemporaryArt #watercolor #watercolour #creativeToots #BuyIntoArt #birds #BirdsOfMastodon #BirdArt #birding #nature #BirdWatching #handmade

with every dig
of my spade
a robin follows

Robin on a perch is a hand-painted watercolour painting in portrait format by the artist Karen Kaspar.
A small robin with bright orange breast feathers stands on a square wooden perch and looks around with interest. The bird was painted with loose brushstrokes and the background was left white.
The soft watercolour style gives the overall picture a gentle and dreamy touch.

This work, a combination of painting and haiku, is a joint project by Karen Kaspar (© art and artwork) and Marjolein Rotsteeg (© Haiku).
A haiku is a traditional Japanese poetry form consisting of three lines.

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74d

I pulled all my mother’s expectations
with me, like a child’s kite, giddy with stir
of spring…

—Lynn Valentine, “St Kilda Crossing”
from DON’T. EVEN. ASK. TOO. HOT.: New Writing Scotland 42 (ASL, 2024)

Today, 29 August, marks the 95th anniversary of the final evacuation of St Kilda. People had lived there for over 2000 years but, by the early 20th century, life had become too difficult to sustain. In 1930 the islanders petitioned for help to leave

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #StKilda

ST KILDA CROSSING
by Lynn Valentine

I pulled all my mother’s expectations
with me, like a child’s kite, giddy with stir
of spring. Because she was cancer-cracked
I turned tourist by proxy, crouched into cleits
looking for leavings of last century.

I photographed fawn smallness of Soays
felt the crash of wind-whipped stacs,
my pockets salt-filled. I leant
on those islands as my mother leant on me,
filled my lungs with their breeze
and leaping green language of sea.

I tried to hold my breath for days,
took it back to my mother, exhaled
island air on her weakened frame –
whispered broken stories of birds and rain.

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74d

Whan du telt me hoo du thowt o ‘luck’
as nae mair as chance, de happy hubbelskju
o aentropie, I thowt onnly o de ben-end
o my grandmidder’s hoose an aa her talismans
o tat…

—Roseanne Watt, “Lukkie”

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Shetland #Shetlandic #Scots #Scotslanguage

Lukkie
Roseanne Watt

Whan du telt me hoo du thowt o ‘luck’
as nae mair as chance, de happy hubbelskju
o aentropie, I thowt onnly o de ben-end
o my grandmidder’s hoose an aa her talismans
o tat. Inbi, luck wis acht an lenned lik coins,
hot fae de löf. Dere wis wyes aboot it:
a sixpence fir de scratchcairds; tree skoilts
o a gingernut wid gie dee a wish; a dram
onnly ivvir gied sungaets roond de room.
Ee time, ower supper, shö telt me hoo shö won
an aamos fae a haafman; a beaded bag
fir a skurtfoo o her luck at sea. I browt him
tae de dance dat week, but someen took him
fae de cloakroom. Less. Dere’s joost some tings
dat du canna keep a haad o. Dat’s true enoff.
It seems tae me wir luck his aye been wattir
cupped by hands at prayer, in a langwich
at his mair wirds fir ill-luckit tings as fair.
Nivir leet, shö says. De lotto’s demoarn.
Can I git dee a gingernut?

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58d

Whaur yon broken brig hings owre;
Whaur yon water maks nae soun’;
Babylon blaws by in stour:
Gang doun wi’ a sang, gang doun…

—“Song”, by William Soutar (1898–1943)
published in William Soutar: Collected Works vol. 1 (Tippermuir Books, 2024)

https://tippermuirbooks.co.uk/product/william-soutar-collected-works-vols-1-2/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #WilliamSoutar

Song
William Soutar

Whaur yon broken brig hings owre;
Whaur yon water maks nae soun’;
Babylon blaws by in stour:
Gang doun wi’ a sang, gang doun.

Deep, owre deep, for onie drouth:
Wan eneuch an ye wud droun:
Saut, or seelfu’, for the mouth;
Gang doun wi’ a sang, gang doun.

Babylon blaws by in stour
Whaur yon water maks nae soun’:
Darkness is your only door;
Gang doun wi’ a sang, gang doun.

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32d

The Treasure

#MastoPrompt #Variable #Poetry #Poems #Sonnet #PoetryCommunity #WritingCommunity

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70d

An lùib na droighne
anns an dris-choille
tha meas an fhoghair
toradh mo ghràidh…

—Niall O’Gallagher, “Crindreas”

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

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

Crindreas
Niall O’Gallagher

An lùib na droighne
anns an dris-choille
tha meas an fhoghair
toradh mo ghràidh

is dealt na maidne
a’ fàgail taise
a’ gleansadh air a
craiceann làn.

Tha brìgh na deirce
mìlse nas seirbhe
na gèire deilge
a’ stailceadh làimh’

ach dh’aindeoin bhioran
bu mhi a spioladh
is le mo bhilean
bhlaisinn àgh.

ALT

Bramble
Niall O’Gallagher

Translated by Deborah Moffatt

Amongst the thorns
in the thicket of brambles,
the autumn berry
is my heart’s desire,

the damp sheen
of the morning dew
gleaming bright on
its full ripe skin.

The sap of the sweet berry
is sharper than the thorn
that pierces the thin skin
of the plundering hand,

but I would pick my fill,
in spite of the pricks
that my lips might taste
the glory of the bramble.

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68d

Page Against the Machine: On the Poetics of AI Refusal

Pip Thornton documents and debates some of the outputs of ‘Writing the Wrongs of AI’, a project which explored creative ways to demonstrate the power that human words, poetics and writing might have in resisting the influence of artificial intelligence in the literary sphere and beyond.

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/2025/09/page-against-the-machine-on-the-poetics-of-ai-refusal/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #AI #genAI #generativeAI

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29d

We fecht to lowse oursels, we coup and skar
and joater menseless in the foazie grun,
feart to bide still, and fusionless to rin,
we plouter on, forfeuchan, through the haar…

—Robert Garioch, “The Bog”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2017)

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

#Scottish #literature #Scotstober #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage

Robert Garioch
The Bog

The lyft is lourd abuin the hechs and howes,
peat-bog and mist hae left nae space atween;
the puddock cours doun frae the wecht abuin,
here is nae leevin-space for men or yowes.

We fecht to lowse oursels, we coup and skar
and joater menseless in the foazie grun,
feart to bide still, and fusionless to rin,
we plouter on, forfeuchan, through the haar.

We rax doun, seeking rock, wi feet grown nesh
frae clatchin in thae never-ending clarts,
ettlin to traipse on stanes, to thole their scarts,
and win to some green haugh, kind to the flesh.

Tho weill we ken it's aye the same auld place,
we fuil oursels to pech and plouter on
frae this black oily puddle-hole to thon,
that gies the meisor of our hirple-pace.

Our thochts are aye on skinklan burns, dour rocks,
clean waters we cuid loup frae stane to stane,
bricht in the sun or weet wi dounricht rain,
dazzlit wi licht and stoun'd by solid shocks.

But maist we think of gangin ither airts,
whaur we micht hae faur distances in sicht,
think lang to traivel til a warld of bricht
pure colour in outlandish foreign pairts.

Sae we jalouse some howff juist owre the brae,
some hevin abuin the sterns, juist out of sicht,
whaur we cuid gae the morn, gin we micht
loup owre the muin, as did the famous quey.

Wanting some yirdlie hevin for Almains,
the Fuhrer maks a furore in our lugs;
we bield in ivory touers or Luftwaffe-skugs,
while bummlan boomers threaten broken banes.

ALT

Thae men that fetch us boombs frae yont the seas,
heich in their Heinkels, ken the same despair;
they maun skite flat-out on the slidder air,
forever doomed, like us, to future ease.

Nou the impassioned banshees, in F-moll,
screich out wi siren voices, anger-riven,
Beethoven's chord of Opus 57,
the same that skeiched us in the Usher Hall.

The causey street we staund on shaks and shogs,
freestane fore-storey housses flee in air;
real super-realism everywhere
maks grand pianos mate wi clarty bogs.

The bog—I ken the feel o't weill eneuch,
tak its conditions, staund and dinnae fecht
to lowse my feet, and find it tholes my wecht
ablow the haar, gin but my heid be leugh.

And here are colours braw as onie shroud:
broun and dark broun, black and mair black, an aa
the fud or hint-end of the watergaw,
whaur I hae fand my forpit-met of gowd.

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68d

This far north, the harvest happens late.
Rooks go clattering over the sycamores
whose shadows yawn after them, down to the river.
Uncut wheat staggers under its own weight…

—Dorothy Lawrenson, “September”
Published in Painted, spoken 22

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #September

September
Dorothy Lawrenson

This far north, the harvest happens late.
Rooks go clattering over the sycamores
whose shadows yawn after them, down to the river.
Uncut wheat staggers under its own weight.

Summer is leaving too, exchanging its gold
for brass and copper. It is not so strange
to feel nostalgia for the present; already
this September evening is as old

as a photograph of itself. The light, the shadows
on the field, are sepia, as if this were
some other evening in September, some other
harvest that went ungathered years ago.

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69d

The mile-high buildings flashed, flushed, greyed, went dark,
greyed, flushed, flashed, chameleons under flak
of cloud and sun…

—Edwin Morgan, “Clydegrad”
CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS, Carcanet 2020

Today, 3 September, is Skyscraper Day

1/2

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

#Scottish #literature #Glasgow #poem #poetry #ConcretePoetry #Skyscraper #SkyscraperDay

Clydegrad
Edwin Morgan

It was so fine we lingered there for hours.
The long broad streets shone strongly after rain.
Sunset blinded the tremble of the crane
we watched from, dazed the heliport-towers.
The mile-high buildings flashed, flushed, greyed, went dark,
greyed, flushed, flashed, chameleons under flak
of cloud and sun. The last far thunder-sack
ripped and spilled its grumble. Ziggurat-stark,
a power-house reflected in the lead
of the old twilight river leapt alive
lit up at every window, and a boat
of students rowed past, slid from black to red
into the blaze. But where will they arrive
with all, boat, city, earth, like them, afloat?

ALT

Book cover

EDWIN MORGAN
CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS

edited by
HAMISH WHYTE

Carcanet Classics

The cover image shows a view looking up the face of a concrete tower block, angled against a star-strewn sky – as if the skyscraper was a starship, cruising the cosmos.

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1y

English author, poet, and gardener Vita Sackville-West was born #OTD in 1892.

She published more than a dozen collections of poetry and 13 novels during her life. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature: in 1927 for her pastoral epic, The Land, & in 1933 for her Collected Poems. She was the inspiration for the protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her friend & lover Virginia Woolf.

Vita Sackville-West at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/34850

#books #literature #poetry

Sackville-West around 1915, from The Life of V.Sackville-West by Victoria Glendinning

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Cover page of Knole and the Sackvilles by V. Sackville-West

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57d

I gaed to spend a week in Fife—
An unco week it proved to be—
For there I met a waesome wife
Lamentin’ her viduity.
Her grief brak out sae fierce and fell,
I thought her heart wad burst the shell,
And,—I was sae left tae mysel,—
I sell’t her an annuity…

—“The Annuity” by George Outram (1805–1856)

Today, 15 September, is Pensions Awareness Day. Tak tent!

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #humor #pension #pensions

The Annuity
George Outram

I gaed to spend a week in Fife—
An unco week it proved to be—
For there I met a waesome wife
Lamentin’ her viduity.
Her grief brak out sae fierce and fell,
I thought her heart wad burst the shell,
And,—I was sae left tae mysel,—
I sell’t her an annuity.

The bargain lookit fair eneugh—
She just was turned o’ saxty-three—
I couldna guessed she’d prove sae teugh,
By human ingenuity.
But years have come, and years have gane,
And there she’s yet as stieve ’s a stane—
The limmer’s growin’ young again,
Since she got her annuity.

She’s crined awa’ to bane and skin,
But that, it seems, is naught to me;
She’s like to live—although she’s in
The last stage o’ tenuity.
She munches wi’ her wizened gums,
An’ stumps about on legs o’ thrums;
But comes—as sure as Christmas comes—
To ca’ for her annuity.

She jokes her joke, an’ cracks her crack,
As spunkie as a growin’ flea—
An’ there she sits upon my back,
A livin’ perpetuity.
She hurkles by her ingle side,
An’ toasts an’ toasts her wrunkled hide—
Lord kens how lang she yet may bide
To ca’ for her annuity.

I read the tables drawn wi’ care
For an Insurance Company;
Her chance o’ life was stated there,
Wi’ perfect perspicuity.
But tables here or tables there,
She’s lived ten years beyond her share,
An’s like to live a dizzen mair,
To ca’ for her annuity.

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$I got the loun that drew the deed— We spelled it o’er right carefully;— In vain he yerked his souple heid, To find an ambiguity: It’s dated—tested—a’ complete— The proper stamp—nae word delete— And diligence, as on decreet, May pass for her annuity. Last Yule she had a fearfu’ hoast,— I thought a kink might set me free; I led her out, ’mang snaw and frost, Wi’ constant assiduity. But deil ma’ care—the blast gaed by, And missed the auld anatomy; It just cost me a tooth, forbye Discharging her annuity. I thought that grief might gar her quit— Her only son was lost at sea— But aff her wits behoved to flit, An’ leave her in fatuity! She threeps, an’ threeps, he’s livin’ yet, For a’ the tellin’ she can get; But catch the doited runt forget To ca’ for her annuity! If there’s a sough o’ cholera, Or typhus,—wha sae gleg as she? She buys up baths, an’ drugs, an’ a’, In siccan superfluity! She doesna need—she’s fever proof— The pest gaed owre her very roof— She tauld me sae—an’ then her loof Held out for her annuity. Ae day she fell, her arm she brak— A compound fracture as could be— Nae leech the cure wad undertak, Whate’er was the gratuity. It’s cured! She handles ’t like a flail— It does as weel in bits as hale— But I’m a broken man mysel Wi’ her and her annuity.$

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Her broozled flesh and broken banes
Are weel as flesh and banes can be;
She beats the tades that live in stanes,
An’ fatten in vacuity!
They die when they’re exposed to air—
They canna thole the atmosphere—
But her!—expose her onywhere—
She lives for her annuity.

If mortal means could nick her thread,
Sma’ crime it wad appear to me—
Ca’ t murder—or ca’ t homicide—
I’d justify ’t—an’ do it tae.
But how to fell a withered wife
That’s carved out o’ the tree of life—
The timmer limmer dares the knife
To settle her annuity.

I’d try a shot—but whar’s the mark?—
Her vital parts are hid frae me;
Her back-bane wanders through her sark
In an unkenned corkscrewity.
She’s palsified, an’ shakes her head
Sae fast about, ye scarce can see ’t—
It’s past the power o’ steel or lead
To settle her annuity.

She might be drowned;—but go she’ll not
Within a mile o’ loch or sea;
Or hanged—if cord could grip a throat
O’ siccan exiguity.
It’s fitter far to hang the rope—
It draws out like a telescope—
’Twad tak’ a dreadfu’ length o’ drop
To settle her annuity.

Will poison do ’t?—It has been tried.
But, be’t in hash or fricassee,
That’s just the dish she can’t abide,
Whatever kind o’ goût it hae.
It’s needless to assail her doubts,—
She gangs by instinct—like the brutes,—
An’ only eats an’ drinks what suits
Hersel an’ her annuity.

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The Bible says the age o’ man
Threescore and ten, perchance, may be;
She’s ninety-four—Let them wha can
Explain the incongruity.
She should hae lived afore the flood—
She’s come o’ patriarchal blood—
She’s some auld Pagan, mummified
Alive for her annuity.

She’s been embalmed inside and oot—
She’s sauted to the last degree—
There’s pickle in her very snoot
Sae caper-like an’ cruety.
Lot’s wife was fresh compared to her—
They’ve kyanized the useless knir,—
She canna decompose—nae mair
Than her accursed annuity.

The water-drap wears out the rock,
As this eternal jaud wears me;
I could withstand the single shock,
But not the continuity.
It’s pay me here, an’ pay me there—
An’ pay me, pay me, evermair—
I’ll gang demented wi’ despair—
I’m charged for her annuity!

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