I’m weary o’ the rose as o’ my brain,
And for a deeper knowledge I am fain
Than frae this noddin’ object I can gain.

Beauty is a’e thing, but it tines anither
(For, fegs, they never can be f’und thegither),
And ’twixt the twa it’s no’ for me to swither.

As frae the grun’ sae thocht frae men springs oot,
A ferlie that tells little o’ its source, I doot,
And has nae vera fundamental root.

And cauld agen my hert are laid
The words o’ Plato when he said,
“God o’ geometry is made.”

Frae my ain mind I fa’ away,
That never yet was feared to say
What turned the souls o’ men to clay,

Nor cared gin truth frae me ootsprung
In ne’er a leed o’ ony tongue
That ever in a heid was hung.

I ken hoo much oor life is fated
Aince its first cell is animated,
The fount frae which the flesh is jetted.

I ken hoo lourd the body lies
Upon the spirit when it flies
And fain abune its stars ’ud rise.

And see I noo a great wheel move,
And a’ the notions that I love
Drap into stented groove and groove?

It maitters not my mind the day,
Nocht maitters that I strive to dae,
—For the wheel moves on in its ain way.

I sall be moved as it decides
To look at Life frae ither sides;
Rejoice, rebel, its turn abides.

And as I see the great wheel spin
There flees a licht frae’t lang and thin
That Earth is like a snaw-ba’ in.

(To the uncanny thocht I clutch
—The nature o’ man’s soul is such
That it can ne’er wi’ life tine touch.

Man’s mind is in God’s image made,
And in its wildest dreams arrayed
In pairt o’ Truth is still displayed.)

Then suddenly I see as weel
As me spun roon’ within the wheel,
The helpless forms o’ God and Deil.

And on a birlin’ edge I see
Wee Scotland squattin’ like a flea,
And dizzy wi’ the speed, and me!

I’ve often thrawn the warld frae me,
Into the Pool o’ Space, to see
The Circles o’ Infinity,

Or like a flat stane gar’d it skite,
A Morse code message writ in licht
That yet I couldna read aricht.

The skippin’ sparks, the ripples, rit
Like skritches o’ a grain o’ grit
’Neth Juggernaut in which I sit.

Twenty-six thoosand years it tak’s
Afore a’e single roond it mak’s,
And syne it melts as it were wax.

The Phœnix guise ’tll rise in syne
Is mair than Euclid or Einstein
Can dream o’ or’s in dreams o’ mine.

Upon the huge circumference are
As neebor points the Heavenly War
That dung doun Lucifer sae far,

And that upheaval in which I
Sodgered ’neth the Grecian sky
And in Italy and Marseilles,

And there isna room for men
Wha the haill o’ history ken
To pit a pin twixt then and then.

 

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle