from Dreams and Other Nightmares: New and Uncollected Poems 1954 – 2009
#ScottishWriters
There were never strawberries like the ones we had that sultry afternoon sitting on the step of the open french window
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…
Three particles lived in mystical… They made knife, fork, and spoon, and earth, sea, and sky. They made animal, vegetable, and m… and faith, hope, and charity.
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…
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…
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,
I knew his name fine, but couldn’t… He was Norway’s answer to Robert… among the sophisticates, and their… Do you not know who I mean? I hav… to check it up, but gave a lecture…
With a ragged diamond of shattered plate-glass a young man and his girl are falling backwards into a shop-… The young man’s face
generation upon generation upon generation upon generation upon generation upon
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…
‘What would you put in the foundat… for future generations?’ ‘A horses… a ballet shoe, a horseshoe crab, a… a sheriff’s star, a pacemaker, a t… a ladybird, a love-letter, a laugh…
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…
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…
In a little rainy mist of white an… we sat under an old tree, drank tea toasts to the powdery mo… undrunk got merry, played catch with the empty flask, on the pine…
You don’t care about the wildness… my old gasometer! The kitchen wind… frames your gaunt frame, the black… stand firm, stand out, unyielding… of reds and purples in the dying d…