Eggplant.place

350d

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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350d

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Land of Nod” – from A Child’s Garden of Verses

Image: illustration by Charles Robinson (1870–1937) to “The Land of Nod”

Today, 25 September, is #WorldDreamDay

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47431/the-land-of-nod

#Scottish #literature #kidlit #poetry #19thcentury #RobertLouisStevenson #dream #dreams #dreaming

The Land of Nod
by Robert Louis Stevenson

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do —
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

ALT

Pen and ink illustration by Charles Robinson to Stevenson’s poem "The Land of Nod". The image is tall and thin; the right side is dominated by a black crag (or possibly a strange tree-trunk), in front of which, in the bottom right-hand corner, stand two fantastical bird-like creatures with scruffy feathers and outsized, beaked heads. Although not overtly threatening or frightening, they are unsettling in their appearance. Behind them, a small child, head bowed, toils up-slope with the aid of a staff. Strange, cloudy outcrops and buildings are in the background. In the top left-hand corner, a giant, long-nosed face peers over the top of the cliff.

Caption: "Up the mountain sides of dreams"

ALT

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348d

“Spark thrived in institutions. This is because, like Miss Brodie, she was a conservative anarchist. Her anarchism was part of the Edinburgh Character and her conservatism rooted in respect for order, authority and ritual.”

Behind the Fame (and Inspirations) of Muriel Spark: Frances Wilson on the similarities between Spark’s favourite teacher and her most famous protagonist

https://lithub.com/behind-the-fame-and-inspirations-of-muriel-spark/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thcentury #womenwriters

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329d

“Very good. And after you had repeated the order, and again he refused, you charged him, and he became abusive?”
“Yessir.”
“What did he say?”
Baxter hesitated. “He called me a shilpit wee nyaff, sir.”
The president stirred. “He called you what?”
Baxter coloured slightly. “A shilpit wee nyaff, sir.”
The president looked at Prosecution. “Perhaps you can translate?”

—from “McAuslan’s Court-Martial”, by George MacDonald Fraser

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #Scotstober #nyaff

Prosecution, hand it to him, didn’t even blink. He selected a paper from his table, held it up at arm’s length, & said gravely:
“Shilpit, I am informed, sir, signifies stunted, undergrown. As to ‘wee’, that is, of course, current in English as well as in …” he paused for a second “… the Northern dialects. Nyaff, an insignificant person, a pip-squeak.”
“Remarkable,” said the president. “Nyaff. Ny-ahff.” He tried it round his tongue. “Expressive. Synonymous with the Norse ‘niddering’.”
“Sir?” said Prosecution.
“Niddering,” said the president. “A worthless person, a non-entity. Possibly a connection there. So many of these Norse pejoratives begin with ‘n’.”
Einstein coughed slightly. “Hebrew too, sir. ‘Nebbish’ means much the same thing.”
“Indeed?” The president brightened. “I’m obliged to you. Nyaff,” he repeated with satisfaction. “Remarkable. Do go on.”
Prosecution, looking slightly rattled, turned again to Baxter.
“And after he had called you … these names?”
“He called me a glaikit sumph.”
You could see Prosecution wishing he hadn’t asked. The president was looking hopeful. “Sumph,” said the president with relish. “That’s strong.” He looked inquiring, & Prosecution sighed.
“Sumph, a dullard, an uninspired person, a stick-in-the-mud. Glaikit, loose-jointed, awkward, ill-formed.” He put down his paper with resignation. “There is more, sir, in the dialect & in ordinary speech, but I question whether …”

ALT

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346d

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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346d

“I first met Edna O’Brien on a mild spring evening in 2009. There had been a party to celebrate the 70th birthday of Seamus Heaney and I was running late, so I put up my hand for a taxi and a rumbling black cab drew to a halt. The door swung open and Edna stepped on to the pavement like Ophelia out of the weedy brook. She was a vision in black velvet and volumised hair.”

—an extract from ON FRIENDSHIP by Andrew O’Hagan

@bookstodon

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/27/there-was-comedy-at-all-times-andrew-ohagan-on-15-years-of-funny-frank-and-champagne-fuelled-friendship-with-edna-obrien

#Scottish #literature #friendship

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346d

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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347d

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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346d

Take Four Books: William Boyd

Available on BBC Sounds. William Boyd speaks to Take Four Books about his new spy novel, The Predicament, & together with presenter James Crawford & crime writer Louise Welsh they explore its connections to three other literary works.

@bookstodon

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002k3g6

#Scottish #literature #spythriller #thriller

Edited 346d ago

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249d

Winter winds are biting,
Etching the woods in shadows.

The paw prints of hunting dogs
Are black stars in the snow…

—Sheena Blackhall, “A Brueghel Winter”
🖼️ Pieter Bruegel the Elder, “Hunters in the Snow”, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-brueghel-winter/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #art #painting #Bruegel #PieterBruegelTheElder

A Brueghel Winter
by Sheena Blackhall

Winter winds are biting,
Etching the woods in shadows.

The paw prints of hunting dogs
Are black stars in the snow

Beyond the icy poles of denuded trees
Even the hawks have frozen
Hanging, still, in the bleak chill of day.

The hill is a perilous stair
Here and there, in isolated pools
Fish blink up through glassy windows of water
The year turns on its axis
Underground, numb snowdrops shiver and wait.

ALT

“Hunters in the Snow”, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, (Netherlands, mid-16th century). Executed primarily in gloomy whites and murky greys, the topography represents a river-cut valley overtaken by freezing snow with barren, rugged mountain peaks looming in the distance.

In the foreground, three hunters and a pack of dogs return from a quest, with the hunters' slumped bodies and the dogs' bowed heads suggesting the catch was disappointing.

In the town below, some people make winter preparations while others enjoy winter pastimes on the ice. A frozen water-mill, and bare trees inhabited by several crows, suggest the harshness of the season.

ALT

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347d

On BBC Sounds: Jackie Kay talks to John Wilson about her childhood in Glasgow as the mixed-race, adopted daughter of a loving couple.

Jackie first introduction to performance & theatre were the parties her parents hosted to raise money for the Communist Party.

Growing up in Glasgow in the 60s & 70s, Jackie had very few Black role models & took inspiration from the works of Audre Lorde & Angela Davis.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002jttv

#Scottish #literature #identity #poetry #JackieKay #Glasgow

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346d

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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278d

Here, I got you one of those you like:
those bewildered late bloomers, tough and small
and sweeter than they’ve any right to be…

—Don Paterson, “A Winter Apple”
Published in THE ARCTIC (Faber, 2022)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #winter

A Winter Apple
by Don Paterson

for Nora Chassler

Here, I got you one of those you like:
those bewildered late bloomers, tough and small
and sweeter than they’ve any right to be,
as green as Eden, the red an afterthought
as if there’d been an hour left in the season
to paint them all, and where the brush had swept
the snow-white fruit below is stained with pink
as if your teeth had bled from biting it.
It was hard enough to body itself forth
with so few leaves to hide it from the frost
without it burning fuel on working out
where its skin stopped and its flesh began.
All that touched it shook its heart. It was that
or it was nothing. Take it in your pocket
on your long Sunday walk to eat by the loch
with that lone jackdaw only you can talk to.
I make no great claims for this little thing
but I promise only good will come of it.

ALT

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345d

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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148d

A bony horse with a bird on it droops its head.
With a cart of skulls like potatoes Death drives onward…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Bruegel”
from DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

A poem for World Art Day

https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/pieter-bruegel-the-elder/m0h6nl?hl=en

#Scottish #literature #art #painting #visualart #poetry #poem #Bruegel #WorldArtDay

Bruegel
by Iain Crichton Smith

A bony horse with a bird on it droops its head.
With a cart of skulls like potatoes Death drives onward.

There's a storm of monsters snouted and obscene
and on another page a neat snow scene.

Large peasants dance under a leaden sky
and ships are sinking in a black-framed sea.

The blind raise tortured faces. In Cockayne
they eat and drink and sleep and at the moon

a peasant pisses. Proverbs multiply.
Children with adult faces gravely play

while aprons break the storm, red plates and jugs,
Death in a hood and lands pulled back like rugs.

And over the countryside the black birds go
with far below them hunters in the snow.

ALT

A montage of various paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, mostly full of sixteenth-century Netherlandish peasant lives, eating, drinking, dancing, playing, working, trudging through the snow – although there is also a painting showing warring angels and devils, and another with two small monkeys sitting in an arched window. The monkeys have small chains running from their waists to a metal ring embedded in the windowsill.

ALT

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345d

Today, 30 September, is International Translation Day – read THE BOTTLE IMP: Scottish literature & translation issue free online:

🇩🇪 SUNSET SONG in the GDR
🇮🇹 THE BLACK ARROW on Italian TV
🏆 Scotland’s Nobel-nominated Esperanto poet
🇫🇷 Franco-Scots poetry & postcolonialism
🏗️ Transcreating concrete poetry

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2019/12/bad-harsk-speech-and-lewit-barbar-tung/

#Scottish #literature #InternationalTranslationDay #translation #SunsetSong #GDR #Italian #Esperanto #French #postcolonial #poetry #concretepoetry

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345d

“The use of Scots, apart from the relative ease of working up the right atmosphere, also helps (though dangerously) because of the verbal freedom it confers on a harassed translator”

—Edwin Morgan on translating Mayakovsky into Scots

1/3

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/edwin-morgan-in-touch-with-language/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #translation #InternationalTranslationDay #Scots #Scotslanguage #Russian #EdwinMorgan #Mayakovsky

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345d

Professor John Corbett discusses Edwin Morgan’s translation of Rostand’s CYRANO DE BERGERAC – from our 2021 Schools Conference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0lp5t85x2g

#Scottish #literature #theatre #drama #translation #InternationalTranslationDay #Cyrano

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345d

“Somehow hearing the play in Scots gave Anglophone audiences an insight into Tremblay that had hitherto eluded them”

—Mark Fisher on MICHEL TREMBLAY: PLAYS IN SCOTS – Scots translations of 8 plays by the Quebecois playwright

1/4

https://www.critical-stages.org/29/michel-tremblay-plays-in-scots-two-vols/

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #drama #theatre #Quebec #Tremblay #translation #InternationalTranslationDay

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328d

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 328d ago

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341d

From Canonmills To Coral Islands
10 Nov, Edinburgh – free

From his first day at school in Canonmills to his last day as a world-famous author on the Pacific island of Samoa, Robert Louis Stevenson (RLS) led a remarkable life.

Join folk singer & RLS biographer Jeremy Hodges for a musical journey through that lifelong adventure, featuring Stevenson’s own poetry.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/from-canonmills-to-coral-islands-tickets-1757066466099

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Edinburgh #Samoa

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328d

“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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344d

John Buchan: A Man For Our Time?

Prof Murray Pittock discusses John Buchan – a literary legend & a man ahead of his time on issues from Scottish nationalism to the rights of indigenous peoples. Recorded at the 2025 Beyond Borders International Festival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5zPRJt1Hdg

#Scottish #literature #Buchan #JohnBuchan

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344d

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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342d

Concrete Scottish Connections: Finlay, Jandl, Gomringer, & Satie
22 Oct, Edinburgh – free

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Ernst Jandl, & Eugen Gomringer – all born in 1925 – helped shape concrete poetry, breaking linguistic barriers & reimagining the power of words

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/concrete-scottish-connections-finlay-jandl-gomringer-and-satie-tickets-1743611311369

#Scottish #literature #German #poetry #concretepoetry

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