Whaur are Bannockburn and Flodden?
—O’ a’e grain like facets hod’n,
Little wars (twixt that which God in

Focht and won, and that which He
Took baith sides in hopelesly),
Less than God or I can see.

By whatna cry o’ mine oottopped
Sall be a’ men ha’e sung and hoped
When to a’e note they’re telescoped?

And Jesus and a nameless ape
Collide and share the selfsame shape
That nocht terrestrial can escape?

But less than this nae man need try.
He’d better be content to eye
The wheel in silence whirlin’ by.

Nae verse is worth a ha’et until
It can join issue wi’ the Will
That raised the Wheel and spins it still,

But a’ the music that mankind
’S made yet is to the Earth confined,
Poo’erless to reach the general mind,

Poo’erless to reach the neist star e’en,
That as a pairt o’ts sel’ is seen,
And only men can tell between.

Yet I exult oor sang has yet
To grow wings that’ll cairry it
Ayont its native speck o’ grit,

And I exult to find in me
The thocht that this can ever be,
A hope still for humanity.

For gin the sun and mune at last
Are as a neebor’s lintel passed,
The wheel’ll tine its stature fast,

And birl in time inside oor heids
Till we can thraw oot conscious gleids
That draw an answer to oor needs,

Or if nae answer still we find
Brichten till a’ thing is defined
In the huge licht-beams o’ oor kind,

And if we still can find nae trace
Ahint the Wheel o’ ony Face,
There’ll be a glory in the place,

And we may aiblins swing content
Upon the wheel in which we’re pent
In adequate enlightenment.

Nae ither thocht can mitigate
The horror o’ the endless Fate
A’thing ’s whirled in predestinate.

O whiles I’d fain be blin’ to it,
As men wha through the ages sit,
And never move frae aff the bit,

Wha hear a Burns or Shakespeare sing,
Yet still their ain bit jingles string,
As they were worth the fashioning.

Whatever Scotland is to me,
Be it aye pairt o’ a’ men see
O’ Earth and o’ Eternity

Wha winna hide their heids in’t till
It seems the haill o’ Space to fill,
As t’were an unsurmounted hill.

He canna Scotland see wha yet
Canna see the Infinite,
And Scotland in true scale to it.

Nor blame I muckle, wham atour
Earth’s countries blaw, a pickle stour,
To sort wha’s grains they ha’e nae poo’er.

E’en stars are seen thegither in
A’e skime o’ licht as grey as tin
Flyin’ on the wheel as t’were a pin.

Syne ither systems ray on ray
Skinkle past in quick array
While it is still the self-same day,

A’e day o’ a’ the million days
Through which the soul o’ man can gaze
Upon the wheel’s incessant blaze,

Upon the wheel’s incessant blaze
As it were on a single place
That twinklin’ filled the howe o’ space.

A’e point is a’ that it can be,
I wis nae man ’ll ever see
The rest o’ the rotundity.

Impersonality sall blaw
Through me as ’twere a bluffert o’ snaw
To scour me o’ my sense o’ awe,

A bluffert o’ snaw, the licht that flees
Within the Wheel, and Freedom gi’es
Frae Dust and Daith and a’ Disease,

 

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle