This munelicht’s fell like whisky noo I see’t.
—Am I a thingum mebbe that is kept
Preserved in spirits in a muckle bottle
Lang centuries efter sin’ wi’ Jean I slept?

—Mounted on a hillside, wi’ the thistles
And bracken for verisimilitude,
Like a stuffed bird on metal like a brainch,
Or a seal on a stump o’ rock-like wood?

Or am I juist a figure in a scene
O’ Scottish life A.D. one-nine-two-five?
The haill thing kelters like a theatre claith
Till I micht fancy that I was alive!

I dinna ken and nae man ever can.
I micht be in my ain bed efter a’.
The haill damned thing’s a dream for ocht we ken,
—The Warld and Life and Daith, Heaven, Hell ana’.

We maun juist tak’ things as we find them then,
And mak’ a kirk or mill o’ them as we can,
—And yet I feel this muckle thistle’s staun’in’
Atween me and the mune as pairt o’ a Plan.

It isna there—nor me—by accident.
We’re brocht thegither for a certain reason,
Ev’n gin it’s naething mair than juist to gi’e
My jaded soul a necessary frisson.

I never saw afore a thistle quite
Sae intimately, or at sic an ’oor.
There’s something in the fickle licht that gi’es
A different life to’t and an unco poo’er.

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle