The barren tree, dry leafs, and cracklin’ thorns,
This is the mind o’ a’ humanity,
—The empty intellect that left to grow
’ll let nocht ither be.

Lo! It has choked the sunlicht’s gowden grain,
And strangled syne the white hairst o’ the mune.
Thocht that mak’s a’ the food o’ nocht but Thocht
Is reishlin’ grey abune….

O fitly frae oor cancerous soil
May this heraldic horror rise!
The Presbyterian thistle flourishes,
And its ain roses crucifies….

No’ Edinburgh Castle or the fields
O’ Bannockburn or Flodden
Are dernin’ wi’ the miskent soul
Scotland sae lang has hod’n.

It hands nae pew in ony kirk,
The soul Christ cam’ to save;
Nae R.S.A.’s ha’e pentit it,
F.S.A.’s fund its grave.

Is it alive or deid? I show
My hert—wha will can see.
The secret clyre in Scotland’s life
Has brust and reams through me,

A whummlin’ sea in which is heard
The clunk o’ nameless banes;
A grisly thistle dirlin’ shrill
Abune the broken stanes.

Westminster Abbey nor the Fleet,
Nor England’s Constitution, but
In a’ the michty city there,
You mind a’e fleggit slut,

As Tolstoi o’ Lucerne alane
Minded a’e beggar minstrel seen!
The woundit side draws a’ the warld.
Barbarians ha’e lizards’ een.

Glesca’s a gless whaur Magdalene’s
Discovered in a million crimes.
Christ comes again—wheesht, whatna bairn
In backlands cries betimes?

Hard faces prate o’ their success,
And pickle-makers awn the hills.
There is nae life in a’ the land
But this infernal Thistle kills….

Nae mair I see
As aince I saw
Mysel’ in the thistle
Harth and haw!

Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna
Legato con amore in un volume
(Or else by Hate, fu’ aft the better Love)
Ciò che per l’universo si squaderna.

Sustanzia ed accidenti, e lor costume.
Quasi conflati insieme fer tal modo.
(The michty thistle in wha’s boonds I rove)
Ché ciò ch’io dico è un semplice lume.*

And kent and was creation
In a’ its coontless forms,
Or glitterin’ in raw sunlicht,
Or dark wi’ hurrying storms.

But what’s the voice
That sings in me noo?
—A’e hauf o’ me tellin’
The tither it’s fou!

It’s the voice o’ the Sooth
That’s held owre lang
My Viking North
Wi’ its siren sang….

*Wicksteed’s translation of Dante’s Italian (Paradiso canto xxxiii 85-90) is as follows: “Within its depths I saw ingathered, bound by love in one volume, the scattered leaves of all the universe; substance and accidents and their relations, as though together fused, after such fashion that what I tell of is one simple flame.”

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle