The language that but sparely flooers
And maistly gangs to weed;
The thocht o’ Christ and Calvary
Aye liddenin’ in my heid;
And a’ the dour provincial thocht
That merks the Scottish breed
—These are the thistle’s characters,
To argie there’s nae need.
Hoo weel my verse embodies
The thistle you can read!
—But will a Scotsman never
Frae this vile growth be freed?…

O ilka man alive is like
A quart that’s squeezed into a pint
(A maist unScottish-like affair!)
Or like the little maid that showed
Me into a still sma’er room.

What use to let a sunrise fade
To ha’e anither like’t the morn,
Or let a generation pass
That ane nae better may succeed,
Or wi’ a’ Time’s machinery
Keep naething new aneth the sun,
Or change things oot o’ kennin’ that
They may be a’ the mair the same?

The thistle in the wund dissolves
In lichtnin’s as shook foil gi’es way
In sudden splendours, or the flesh
At Daith lets slip the infinite soul;
And syne it’s like a sunrise tint
In grey o’ day, or love and life,
That in a cloody blash o’ sperm
Undae the warld to big’t again,
Or like a pickled foetus that
Nae man feels ocht in common wi’
—But micht as easily ha’ been!
Or like a corpse a soul set free
Scunners to think it tenanted
—And little recks that but for it
It never micht ha’ been at a’,
Like love frae lust and God frae man!

The wasted seam that dries like stairch
And pooders aff, that micht ha’ been
A warld o’ men and syne o’ Gods;
The grey that haunts the vievest green;
The wrang side o’ the noblest scene
We ne’er can whummle to oor een,
As ’twere the hinderpairts o’ God
His face aye turned the opposite road,
Or’s neth the flooers the drumlie clods
Frae which they come at sicna odds,
As a’ Earth’s magic frae a spirt,
In shame and secrecy, o’ dirt!

Then shak’ nae mair in silly life,
Nor stand impossible as Daith,
Incredible as a’thing is
Inside or oot owre closely scanned.
As mithers aften think the warld
O’ bairns that ha’e nae end or object,
Or lovers think their sweethearts made
Yince-yirn—wha haena waled the lave,
Maikless—when they are naebody,
Or men o’ ilka sort and kind
Are prood o’ thochts they ca’ their ain,
That nameless millions had afore
And nameless millions yet’ll ha’e,
And that were never worth the ha’en,
Or Cruivie’s “latest” story or
Gilsanquhar’s vows to sign the pledge,
Or’s if I thocht maist whisky was,
Or failed to coont the cheenge I got,
Sae wad I be gin I rejoiced,
Or didna ken my place, in thee.

O stranglin’ rictus, sterile spasm,
Thou stricture in the groins o’ licht,
Thou ootrie gangrel frae the wilds
O’ chaos fenced frae Eden yet
By the unsplinterable wa’
O’ munebeams like a bleeze o’ swords!

Nae chance lunge cuts the Gordian knot,
Nor sall the belly find relief
In wha’s entangled moniplies
Creation like a stoppage jams,
Or in whose loins the mapamound
Runkles in strawns o’ bubos whaur
The generations gravel.
The soond o’ water winnin’ free,
The sicht o’ licht that braks the rouk,
The thocht o’ every thwart owrecome
Are in my ears and een and brain,
In whom the bluid is spilt in stour,
In whom a’ licht in darkness fails,
In whom the mystery o’ life
Is to a wretched weed bewrayed.

 

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle