—The drumlie doom that only weighs
On them wha ha’ena seen their place
Yet in creation’s lichtnin’ race,

In the movement that includes
As a tide’s resistless floods
A’ their movements and their moods,—

Until disinterested we,
O’ a’ oor auld delusions free,
Lowe in the wheel’s serenity

As conscious items in the licht,
And keen to keep it clear and bricht
In which the haill machine is dight,

The licht nae man has ever seen
Till he has felt that he’s been gi’en
The stars themsels insteed o’ een,

And often wi’ the sun has glowered
At the white mune until it cowered,
As when by new thocht auld’s o’erpowered.

Oor universe is like an e’e
Turned in, man’s benmaist hert to see,
And swamped in subjectivity.

But whether it can use its sicht
To bring what lies withoot to licht
To answer’s still ayont my micht.

But when that inturned look has brocht
To licht what still in vain it’s socht
Ootward maun be the bent o’ thocht.

And organs may develop syne
Responsive to the need divine
O’ single-minded humankin’.

The function, as it seems to me,
O’ Poetry is to bring to be
At lang, lang last that unity….

But wae’s me on the weary wheel!
Higgledy-piggledy in’t we reel,
And little it cares hoo we may feel.

Twenty-six thoosand years ’tll tak’
For it to threid the Zodiac
—A single roond o’ the wheel to mak’!

Lately it turned—I saw mysel’
In sic a company doomed to mell.
I micht ha’e been in Dante’s Hell.

It shows hoo little the best o’ men
E’en o’ themsels at times can ken,
—I sune saw that when I gaed ben.

The lesser wheel within the big
That moves as merry as a grig,
Wi’ mankind in its whirligig

And hasna turned a’e circle yet
Tho’ as it turns we slide in it,
And needs maun tak’ the place we get,

I felt it turn, and syne I saw
John Knox and Clavers in my raw,
And Mary Queen o’ Scots ana’,

And Rabbie Burns and Weelum Wallace,
And Carlyle lookin’ unco gallus,
And Harry Lauder (to enthrall us).

And as I looked I saw them a’,
A’ the Scots baith big and sma’,
That e’er the braith o’ life did draw.

“Mercy o’ Gode, I canna thole
Wi’ sic an orra mob to roll.”
—“Wheesht! It’s for the guid o’ your soul.”

“But what’s the meanin’, what’s the sense?”
—“Men shift but by experience.
’Twixt Scots there is nae difference.

They canna learn, sae canna move,
But stick for aye to their auld groove
—The only race in History who’ve

Bidden in the same category
Frae stert to present o’ their story,
And deem their ignorance their glory.

The mair they differ, mair the same.
The wheel can whummle a’ but them,
—They ca’ their obstinacy ‘Hame,’

 

from A Drunk Man Looks at Throbbing Thistle