Dae what ye wull ye canna parry
This skeleton-at-the-feast that through the starry
Maze o’ the warld’s intoxicatin’ soiree
Claughts ye, as micht at an affrontit quean
A bastard wean!

Prood mune, ye needna thring your shouder there,
And at your puir get like a snawstorm stare,
It’s yours—there’s nae denyin’t—and I’m shair
You’d no’ enjoy the evenin’ much the less
Gin you’d but openly confess!

Dod! It’s an eaten and a spewed-like thing,
Fell like a little-bodies’ changeling,
And it’s nae credit t’ye that you s’ud bring
The like to life—yet, gi’en a mither’s love,
—Hee, hee!—wha kens hoo’t micht improve?…

Or is this Heaven, this yalla licht,
And I the aft’rins o’ the Earth,
Or sic’s in this wanchancy time
May weel fin’ sudden birth?

The roots that wi’ the worms compete
Hauf-publish me upon the air.
The struggle that divides me still
Is seen fu’ plainly there.

The thistle’s shank scarce holes the grun’,
My grave’ll spare nae mair I doot.
—The crack’s fu’ wide; the shank’s fu’ strang;
A’ that I was is oot.

My knots o’ nerves that struggled sair
Are weel reflected in the herb;
My crookit instincts were like this,
As sterile and acerb.

My self-tormented spirit took
The shape repeated in the thistle;
Sma’ beauty jouked my rawny banes
And maze o’ gristle.

I seek nae peety, Paraclete,
And, fegs, I think the joke is rich
—Pairt soul, pairt skeleton’s come up;
They kentna which was which!…

Thou Daith in which my life
Sae vain a thing can seem,
Frae whatna source d’ye borrow
Your devastatin’ gleam?

Nae doot that hidden sun
’Ud look fu’ wae ana’,
Gin I could see it in the licht
That frae the Earth you draw!…

Shudderin’ thistle, gi’e owre, gi’e owre!
A’body’s gi’en in to the facts o’ life;
The impossible truth’ll triumph at last,
And mock your strife.

Your sallow leafs can never thraw,
Wi’ a’ their oorie shakin’,
Ae doot into the hert o’ life
That it may be mistak’n….

 

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle