Is it the munelicht or a leprosy
That spreids aboot me; and a thistle
Or my ain skeleton through wha’s bare banes
A fiendish wund’s begood to whistle?

The devil’s lauchter has a hwyl like this.
My face has flown open like a lid
—And gibberin’ on the hillside there
Is a’ humanity sae lang has hid!…

My harns are seaweed—when the tide is in
They swall like blethers and in comfort float,
But when the tide is oot they lie like gealed
And runkled auld bluid-vessels in a knot!

The munelicht ebbs and flows and wi’t my thocht,
Noo’ movin’ mellow and noo lourd and rough.
I ken what I am like in Life and Daith,
But Life and Daith for nae man are enough….

And O! to think that there are members o’
St Andrew’s Societies sleepin’ soon’,
Wha to the papers wrote afore they bedded
On regimental buttons or buckled shoon,

Or use o’ England whaur the U.K.’s meent,
Or this or that anent the Blue Saltire,
Recruitin’, pedigrees, and Gude kens what,
Filled wi’ a proper patriotic fire!

Wad I were them—they’ve chosen a better pairt,
The couthie craturs, than the ane I’ve ta’en,
Tyauvin’ wi’ this root-hewn Scottis soul;
A fer, fer better pairt—except for men.

Nae doot they’re sober, as a Scot ne’er was,
Each tethered to a punctual-snorin’ missus,
Whilst I, puir fule, owre continents unkent
And wine-dark oceans waunder like Ulysses….

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle