Thou art the facts in ilka airt
That breenge into infinity,
Criss-crossed wi’ coontless ither facts
Nae man can follow, and o’ which
He is himsel’ a helpless pairt,
Held in their tangle as he were
A stick-nest in Ygdrasil!

The less man sees the mair he is
Content wi’t, but the mair he sees
The mair he kens hoo little o’
A’ that there is he’ll ever see,
And hoo it mak’s confusion aye
The waur confoondit till at last
His brain inside his heid is like
Ariadne wi’ an empty pirn,
Or like a birlin’ reel frae which
A whale has rived the line awa’.

What better’s a forhooied nest
Than skasloch scattered owre the grun’?

O hard it is for man to ken
He’s no’ creation’s goal nor yet
A benefitter by’t at last—
A means to ends he’ll never ken,
And as to michtier elements
The slauchtered brutes he eats to him
Or forms o’ life owre sma’ to see
Wi’ which his heedless body swarms,
And a’ man’s thocht nae mair to them
Than ony moosewob to a man,
His Heaven to them the blinterin’ o’
A snail-trail on their closet wa’!

For what’s an atom o’ a twig
That tak’s a billion to an inch
To a’ the routh o’ shoots that mak’
The bygrowth o’ the Earth aboot
The michty trunk o’ Space that spreids
Ramel o’ licht that ha’e nae end,
—The trunk wi’ centuries for rings,
Comets for fruit, November shooers
For leafs that in its Autumns fa’
—And Man at maist o’ sic a twig
Ane o’ the coontless atoms is!

My sinnens and my veins are but
As muckle o’ a single shoot
Wha’s fibre I can ne’er unwaft
O’ my wife’s flesh and mither’s flesh
And a’ the flesh o’ humankind,
And revelled thrums o’ beasts and plants
As gangs to mak’ twixt birth and daith
A’e sliver for a microscope;
And a’ the life o’ Earth to be
Can never lift frae underneath
The shank o’ which oor destiny’s pairt
As heich’s to stand forenenst the trunk
Stupendous as a windlestrae!

I’m under nae delusions, fegs!
The whuppin’ sooker at wha’s tip
Oor little point o’ view appears,
A midget coom o’ continents
Wi’ blebs o’ oceans set, sends up
The braith o’ daith as weel as life,
And we maun braird anither tip
Oot owre us ere we wither tae,
And join the sentrice skeleton
As coral insects big their reefs.

What is the tree? As fer as Man’s
Concerned it disna maitter
Gin but a giant thistle ’tis
That spreids eternal mischief there,
As I’m inclined to think.
Ruthless it sends its solid growth
Through mair than he can e’er conceive,
And braks his warlds abreid and rives
His Heavens to tatters on its horns.

The nature or the purpose o’t
He needna fash to spier, for he
Is destined to be sune owre grown
And hidden wi’ the parent wud
The spreidin’ boughs in darkness hap,
And a’ its future life’ll be
Ootwith’m as he’s ootwith his banes.

 

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle