It’s no’ withoot regret
That I maun follow yet
The road that led me past
Humanity sae fast,
Yet scarce can gi’e a fate
That is at last mair fit
To them wha tak’ that gait
Than theirs wha winna ha’e’t,
Seein’ that nae man can get
By ony airt or wile,
A destiny quite worth while
As fer as he can tell
—Or even you yoursel’!

And O! I canna thole
Aye yabblin’ o’ my soul,
And fain I wad be free
O’ my eternal me,
Nor fare mysel’ alane
—Withoot that tae be gane,
And this, I ha’e nae doot,
This road’ll bring aboot.

The munelicht that owre clear defines
The thistle’s shrill cantankerous lines
E’en noo whiles insubstantialises
Its grisly form and ’stead devises

A maze o’ licht, a siller-frame,
As ’twere God’s dream frae which it came,
Ne’er into bein’ coorsened yet,
The essence lowin’ pure in it,
As tho’ the fire owrecam’ the clay,
And left its wraith in endless day.

These are the moments when a’ sense
Like mist is vanished and intense,
Magic emerges frae the dense
Body o’ bein’ and beeks immense
As, like a ghinn oot o’ a bottle,
Daith rises frae’s when oor lives crottle.

These are the moments when my sang
Clears its white feet frae oot amang
My broken thocht, and moves as free
As souls frae bodies when they dee.
There’s naething left o’ me ava’
Save a’ I’d hoped micht whiles befa’.

Sic sang to men is little worth.
It has nae message for the earth.
Men see their warld turned tapsalteerie,
Drookit in a licht owre eerie,
Or sent birlin’ like a peerie—
Syne it turns a’ they’ve kent till then
To shapes they can nae langer ken.

Men canna look on nakit licht.
It flings them back wi’ darkened sicht,
And een that canna look at it,
Maun draw earth closer roond them yet
Or, their sicht tint, find nocht instead
That answers to their waefu’ need.

And yet this essence frae the clay
In dooble form aye braks away,
For, in addition to the licht,
There is an e’er-increasin’ nicht,
A nicht that is the bigger, and
Gangs roond licht like an airn band
That noo and then mair tichtly grips,
And snuffs it in a black eclipse,
But rings it maistly as a brough
The mune, till it’s juist bricht enough—
O wull I never lowse a licht
I canna dowse again in spite,
Or dull to haud within my sicht?

The thistle canna vanish quite.
Inside a’ licht its shape maun glint,
A spirit wi’ a skeleton in’t

The world, the flesh, ’ll bide in us
As in the fire the unburnt buss,
Or as frae sire to son we gang
And coontless corpses in us thrang.

And e’en the glory that descends
I kenna whence on me depends,
And shapes itsel’ to what is left
Whaur I o’ me ha’e me bereft,
And still the form is mine, altho’
A force to which I ne’er could grow
Is movin’ in’t as ’twere a sea
That lang syne drooned the last o’ me
—That drooned afore the warld began
A’ that could ever come frae Man.

And as at sicna times am I,
I wad ha’e Scotland to my eye
Until I saw a timeless flame
Tak’ Auchtermuchty for a name,
And kent that Ecclefechan stood
As pairt o’ an eternal mood.

Ahint the glory comes the nicht
As Maori to London’s ruins,
And I’m amused to see the plicht
O’ Licht as’t in the black tide droons,
Yet even in the brain o’ Chaos
For Scotland I wad hain a place,
And let Tighnabruaich still
Be pairt and paircel o’ its will,
And Culloden, black as Hell,
A knowledge it has o’ itsel’.

Thou, Dostoevski, understood,
Wha had your ain land in your bluid,
And into it as in a mould
The passion o’ your bein’ rolled,
Inherited in turn frae Heaven
Or sources fer abune it even.

Sae God retracts in endless stage
Through angel, devil, age on age,
Until at last his infinite natur’
Walks on earth a human cratur’

(Or less than human as to my een
The people are in Aiberdeen);
Sae man returns in endless growth
Till God in him again has scouth.

For sic a loup towards wisdom’s croon
Hoo fer a man maun base him doon,
Hoo plunge aboot in Chaos ere
He finds his needfu’ fittin’ there,
The matrix oot o’ which sublime
Serenity sall soar in time!

Ha’e I the cruelty I need,
Contempt and syne contempt o’ that,
And still contempt in endless meed
That I may never yet be caught
In ony satisfaction, or
Bird-lime that winna let me soar?

Is Scotland big enough to be
A symbol o’ that force in me,
In wha’s divine inebriety
A sicht abune contempt I’ll see?

For a’ that’s Scottish is in me,
As a’ things Russian were in thee,
And I in turn ’ud be an action
To pit in a concrete abstraction
My country’s contrair qualities,
And mak’ a unity o’ these
Till my love owre its history dwells,
As owretone to a peal o’ bells.

And in this heicher stratosphere
As bairn at giant at thee I peer….

 

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle