from Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1990)
#ScottishWriters
The year goes, the woods decay, an… many a summer dies. The swan on Bingham’s pond, a ghost, comes… It goes, and ice appears, it holds… bears gulls that stand around surp…
A cup capsizes along the formica, slithering with a dull clatter. A few heads turn in the crowded ev… An old man is trying to get to his… from the low round stool fixed to…
jollymerry hollyberry jollyberry merryholly happyjolly
At ten I read Mayakovsky had died… learned my first word of Russian,… watched my English teacher poke hi… with a well-chewed HB and get the… to join his easy mocking of my ess…
Kiss me with rain on your eyelashe… come on, let us sway together, under the trees, and to hell with…
I am waiting for you. I have been travelling all morning… and not eaten. I am lying at the edge of the bush on a dusty path that leads from th…
–We come in peace from the third p… Would you take us to your leader? –Bawr stretter! Bawr. Bawr. Stre… –This is a little plastic model of the solar system, with working…
Three o’clock. The bus lurches round into the sun. ‘D’s this go –… he flops beside me – 'right along… —Oh tha’s, tha’s all right, see I… got to get some Easter eggs for th…
Coming up Buchanan Street, quickl… a young man and two girls, under t… The young man carries a new guitar… the girl on the inside carries a v… and the girl on the outside carrie…
It is not of this world, and yet i… And that is how it should be. Strong light hits back and the arm… Coming from where we cannot see, Ought not to see, another dimensio…
Push the boat out, compañeros, push the boat out, whatever the se… Who says we cannot guide ourselves through the boiling reefs, black a… the enemy of us all makes sure of…
The scaffolding has gone. The sky… Clanking poles and thudding planks… let light through At last, hammered the cage door of… bantering dusty brickie crew,
Guten Morgan was a limited editio… ‘Less is not better’ ‘Poetry comes and goes’ ‘Rainbow’ ‘Fled’
Having split, with patience, my first pound note I kept the two halves in case of disbelief. They gave me a glow.
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