Narodbogonosets* are my folk tae,
But in a sma’ way nooadays—
A faitherly God wi’ a lang white beard,
Or painted Jesus in a haze
O’ blue and gowd, a gird aboot his heid
Or some sic thing. It’s been a sair come-doon,
And the trade’s nocht to what it was.
Unnatural practices are the cause.
Baith bairns and Gods’ll be obsolete soon
(The twaesome gang thegither), and forsooth
Scotland turn Eliot’s waste—the Land o’ Drouth.

But even as the stane the builders rejec’
Becomes the corner-stane, the time may be
When Scotland sall find oot its destiny,
And yield the vse-chelovek.**
—At a’ events, owre Europe flaught atween,
My whim (and mair than whim) it pleases
To seek the haund o’ Russia as a freen’
In workin’ oot mankind’s great synthesis….

Melville[12] (a Scot) kent weel hoo Christ’s
Corrupted into creeds malign,
Begotten strife’s pernicious brood
That claims for patron Him Divine.
(The Kirk in Scotland still I cry
Crooks whaur it canna crucify!)

Christ, bleedin’ like the thistle’s roses,
He saw—as I in similar case—
Maistly, in beauty and in fear,
’Ud “paralyse the nobler race,
Smite or suspend, perplex, deter,
And, tortured, prove the torturer.”

And never mair a Scot sall tryst,
Abies on Calvary, wi’ Christ,
Unless, mebbe, a poem like this’ll
Exteriorise things in a thistle,
And gi’e him in this form forlorn
What Melville socht in vain frae Hawthorne….

Spirit o’ strife, destroy in turn
Syne this fule’s Paradise, syne that;
In thee’s in Calvaries that owrecome
Daith efter Daith let me be caught,

Or in the human form that hauds
Us in its ignominious thrall,
While on brute needs oor souls attend
Until disease and daith end all,

Or in the grey deluded brain,
Reflectin’ in anither field
The torments o’ its parent flesh
In thocht-preventin’ thocht concealed,

Or still in curst impossible mould,
Last thistle-shape men think to tak’,
The soul, frae flesh and thocht set free,
On Heaven’s strait if unseen rack.

There may be heicher forms in which
We can nae mair oor plicht define,
Because the agonies involved
’ll bring us their ain anodyne.

Yet still we suffer and still sall,
Altho’, puir fules, we mayna kent
As lang as like the thistle we
In coil and in recoil are pent.

And ferrer than mankind can look
Ghast shapes that free but to transfix
Twine rose-crooned in their agonies,
And strive agen the endless pricks.

The dooble play that bigs and braks
In endless victory and defeat
Is in your spikes and roses shown,
And a’ my soul is haggar’d wi’t….

Be like the thistle, O my soul,
Heedless o’ praise and quick to tak’ affront,
And growin’ like a mockery o’ a’
Maist life can want or thole,
And manifest forevermair
Contempt o’ ilka goal.

O’ ilka goal—save ane alane;
To be yoursel’, whatever that may be,
And as contemptuous o’ that,
Kennin’ nocht’s worth the ha’en,
But certainty that nocht can be,
And hoo that certainty to gain.

For this you still maun grow and grope
In the abyss wi’ ever-deepenin’ roots
That croon your scunner wi’ the grue
O’ hopeless hope
—And gin the abyss is bottomless,
Your growth’ll never stop!…

What earthquake chitters oot
In the Thistle’s oorie shape,
What gleids o’ central fire
In its reid heids escape,
And whatna coonter forces
In growth and ingrowth graip
In an eternal clinch
In this ootcuissen form
That winna be outcast,
But triumphs at the last
(Owre a’ abies itsel’
As fer as we can tell,
Sin’ frae the Eden o’ the world
Ilka man in turn is hurled,
And ilka gairden rins to waste
That was ever to his taste?)

O keep the Thistle ’yont the wa’
Owre which your skeletons you’ll thraw.

*God-bearers
**The All-Man or Pan-Human

 

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle