THE BARREN TREE
(excerpt from A Drunk Man Looks At A Thistle, read by Hugh MacDiarmid. Music by Misty's Big Adventure . Mixed by The Plagiarist)
The barren tree, dry leafs and cracklin thorns,
This is the mind o humanity,
- The empty intellect that left to groow
'll let nocht ither be.
Lo! it has choked the sunlicht's gowden grain,
And strangled wyne the white haist o the mune.
Thocht that maks the food o nocht but Thocht
Is reshlin grey abune....
O fitly frae oor cancerous soil
May this heraldic horror rise !
The Presbeterian thistle flourishes,
And its ain roses crucifies....
No Edinburgh Castle or the fields
O Bannockburn or Flodden
Are dernin wi the miskent soul
Scotland sae lang has hod'n.
It hauds nae pew in ony kirk,
The soul christ cam to save;
Nae R.S.A.'s hae pentit it,
F.S.A.'s fund its grave.
Is it alive or deid? i show
My hert - wha will can see.
The secret clyre in Scotland's life
Has burst and reams through me,
A whummlin sea in which is heard
The chink o nameless banes;
A grisly thistle dirlin shrill
Abune the broken stanes.
Westminster Abbey nor the Fleet,
Nor England's Constitution, but
In aa the michty city there,
You mind ae fleggit slut,
As Tolstoi o Lucerne alane
Minded ae beggar minstrel seen !
the woundit side draws aa the warld.
Barbarians hae lizards' een.
Glesca's a gless whaur Magadalene's
Discovered in a million crimes.
Christ comes again - wheesht, whatna bairn
In backlands cries betimes?
Hard faces prate o their success,
And pickle-makers awn the hills.
There is nae life in aa the land
But this infernal Thistle kills....
Nae mair I see
As aince I saw
Mysel in the thistle
Harth and haw!
Nel suo profondo vidi che s'interna,
Legato con amore in un volume,
[or else by Hate fu' art the better Love]
Ciò che per l'universo si squaderna;
Sustanzia ed accidenti, e lor costume,
Quasi conflati inime per tal modo,
[The michty thistle in wh's boonds I rove]
Che ciò ch'io dico è un semplice lume.
And kent and was creation
In aa its coontless forms,
Or glitterin in raw sunlicht,
Or dark wi hurryin storms.
But what's the voice
That sings in me noo?
- Ae hauf o me tellin
The tither it's fou !
It's the voice o the Sooth
That's held owre lang
My Viking North
Wi its siren sang....
(from the album A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, part2)
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