Eneuch? Then here you are. Here’s the haill story.
Life’s connached shapes too’er up in croons o’ glory,
Perpetuatin’, natheless, in their gory
Colour the endless sacrifice and pain
That to their makin’s gane.
The roses like the saints in Heaven treid
Triumphant owre the agonies o’ their breed,
And wag fu’ mony a celestial heid
Abune the thorter-ills o’ leaf and prick
In which they ken the feck maun stick.
Yank oot your orra boughs, my hert!
A mongrel growth, jumble o’ disproportions,
Whirlin’ in its incredible contortions,
Or wad-be client that an auld whore shuns,
Wardin’ her wizened orange o’ a bosom
Frae importunities sae gruesome,
Or new diversion o’ the hormones
Mair fond o’ procreation than the Mormons,
And fetchin’ like a devastatin’ storm on’s
A’ the uncouth dilemmas o’ oor natur’
Objectified in vegetable maitter.
Yank oot your orra boughs, my hert!
And heed nae mair the foolish cries that beg
You slice nae mair to aff or pu’ to leg,
You skitin’ duffer that gar’s a’body fleg,
—What tho’ you ding the haill warld oot o’ joint
Wi’ a skier to cover-point!
Yank oot your orra boughs, my hert!
There was a danger—and it’s weel I see’t—
Had brocht ye like Mallarmé to defeat:—
“Mon doute, amas de nuit ancienne s’achève
En maint rameau subtil, qui, demeuré les vrais
Bois même, prouve, hélas! que bien seul je m’offrais
Pour triomphe le faute idéale des roses.”
[8]
Yank oot your orra boughs, my hert!...
I love to muse upon the skill that gangs
To mak’ the simplest thing that Earth displays,
The eident life that ilka atom thrangs,
And uses it in the appointit ways,
And a’ the endless brain that nocht escapes
That myriad moves them to inimitable shapes.
Nor to their customed form nor ony ither
New to Creation, by man’s cleverest mind,
A’ needfu’ particles first brocht thegither,
Could they wi’ timeless labour be combined.
There’s nocht that Science yet’s begood to see
In hauf its deemless detail or its destiny.
Oor een gi’e answers based on pairt-seen facts
That beg a’ questions, to ebb minds’ content,
But hoo a’e feature or the neist attracts,
Wi’ millions mair unseen, wha kens what’s meant
By human brains and to what ends may tell
—For naething’s seen or kent that’s near a thing itsel’!
Let whasae vaunts his knowledge then and syne
Sets up a God and kens His purpose tae
Tell me what’s gart a’e strain o’ maitter twine
In sic an extraordinary way,
And what God’s purpose wi’ the Thistle is
—I’ll aiblins ken what he and his God’s worth by this.
I’ve watched it lang and hard until I ha’e
A certain symp’thy wi’ its orra ways
And pride in its success, as weel I may,
In growin’ exactly as its instinct says,
Save in sae fer as thwarts o’ weather or grun’
Or man or ither foes ha’e’ts aims perchance fordone.
But I can form nae notion o’ the spirit
That gars it tak’ the difficult shape it does,
Nor judge the merit yet or the demerit
O’ this detail or that sae fer as it goes
T’ advance the cause that gied it sic a guise
As maun ha’e pleased its Maker wi’ a gey surprise.
The craft that hit upon the reishlin’ stalk,
Wi’ts gausty leafs and a’ its datchie jags,
And spired it syne in seely flooers to brak
Like sudden lauchter owre its fousome rags
Jouks me, sardonic lover, in the routh
O’ contrairies that jostle in this dumfoondrin’ growth.
What strength ’t’ud need to pit its roses oot,
Or double them in number or in size,
He canna tell wha canna plumb the root,
And learn what’s gar’t its present state arise,
And what the limits are that ha’e been put
To change in thistles, and why—and what a change ’ud boot....
I saw a rose come loupin’ oot
[9]Frae a camsteerie plant.
O wha’d ha’e thocht yon puir stock had
Sic an inhabitant?
For centuries it ran to waste,
Wi’ pin-heid flooers at times.
O’ts hidden hert o’ beauty they
Were but the merest skimes.
Yet while it ran to wud and thorns,
The feckless growth was seekin’
Some airt to cheenge its life until
A’ in a rose was beekin’.
“Is there nae way in which my life
Can mair to flooerin’ come,
And bring its waste on shank and jags
Doon to a minimum?
“It’s hard to struggle as I maun
For scrunts o’ blooms like mine,
While blossom covers ither plants
As by a knack divine.
“What hinders me unless I lack
Some needfu’ discipline?
—I wis I’ll bring my orra life
To beauty or I’m din!”
Sae ran the thocht that hid ahint
The thistle’s ugsome guise,
“I’ll brak’ the habit o’ my life
A worthier to devise.”
“My nobler instincts sall nae mair
This contrair shape be gi’en.
I sall nae mair consent to live
A life no’ fit to be seen.”
Sae ran the thocht that hid ahint
The thistle’s ugsome guise,
Till a’ at aince a rose loupt out
—I watched it wi’ surprise.
A rose loupt oot and grew, until
It was ten times the size
O’ ony rose the thistle afore
Had heistit to the skies.
And still it grew till a’ the buss
Was hidden in its flame.
I never saw sae braw a floo’er
As yon thrawn stock became.
And still it grew until it seemed
The haill braid earth had turned
A reid reid rose that in the lift
Like a ball o’ fire burned.
The waefu’ clay was fire aince mair,
As Earth had been resumed
Into God’s mind, frae which sae lang
To grugous state ’twas doomed.
Syne the rose shrivelled suddenly
As a balloon is burst;
The thistle was a ghaistly stick,
As gin it had been curst.
Was it the ancient vicious sway
Imposed itsel’ again,
Or nerve owre weak for new emprise
That made the effort vain,
A coward strain in that lorn growth
That wrocht the sorry trick?
—The thistle like a rocket soared
And cam’ doon like the stick.
Like grieshuckle the roses glint,
The leafs like farles hing,
As roond a hopeless sacrifice
Earth draws its barren ring.
The dream o’ beauty’s dernin’ yet
Ahint the ugsome shape.
—Vain dream that in a pinheid here
And there can e’er escape!
The vices that defeat the dream
Are in the plant itsel’,
And till they’re purged its virtues maun
In pain and misery dwell.
Let Deils rejoice to see the waste,
The fond hope brocht to nocht.
The thistle in their een is as
A favourite lust they’re wrocht.
The orderin’ o’ the thistle means
Nae richtin’ o’t to them.
Its loss they ca’ a law, its thorns
A fule’s fit diadem.
And still the idiot nails itsel’
To its ain crucifix,
While here a rose and there a rose
Jaups oot abune the pricks.
Like connoisseurs the Deils gang roond
And praise its attitude,
Till on the Cross the silly Christ
To fidge fu’ fain’s begood!
Like connoisseurs the Deils gang roond
Wi’ ready platitude.
It’s no’ sae dear as vinegar,
And every bit as good!
The bitter taste is on my tongue,
I chowl my chafts, and pray
“Let God forsake me noo and no’
Staund connoisseur-like tae!”...
The language that but sparely flooers
And maistly gangs to weed;
The thocht o’ Christ and Calvary
Aye liddenin’ in my heid;
And a’ the dour provincial thocht
That merks the Scottish breed
—These are the thistle’s characters,
To argie there’s nae need.
Hoo weel my verse embodies
The thistle you can read!
—But will a Scotsman never
Frae this vile growth be freed?...
O ilka man alive is like
A quart that’s squeezed into a pint
(A maist unScottish-like affair!)
Or like the little maid that showed
Me into a still sma’er room.
What use to let a sunrise fade
To ha’e anither like’t the morn,
Or let a generation pass
That ane nae better may succeed,
Or wi’ a’ Time’s machinery
Keep naething new aneth the sun,
Or change things oot o’ kennin’ that
They may be a’ the mair the same?
The thistle in the wund dissolves
In lichtnin’s as shook foil gi’es way
In sudden splendours, or the flesh
At Daith lets slip the infinite soul;
And syne it’s like a sunrise tint
In grey o’ day, or love and life,
That in a cloody blash o’ sperm
Undae the warld to big’t again,
Or like a pickled foetus that
Nae man feels ocht in common wi’
—But micht as easily ha’ been!
Or like a corpse a soul set free
Scunners to think it tenanted
—And little recks that but for it
It never micht ha’ been at a’,
Like love frae lust and God frae man!
The wasted seam that dries like stairch
And pooders aff, that micht ha’ been
A warld o’ men and syne o’ Gods;
The grey that haunts the vievest green;
The wrang side o’ the noblest scene
We ne’er can whummle to oor een,
As ’twere the hinderpairts o’ God
His face aye turned the opposite road,
Or’s neth the flooers the drumlie clods
Frae which they come at sicna odds,
As a’ Earth’s magic frae a spirt,
In shame and secrecy, o’ dirt!
Then shak’ nae mair in silly life,
Nor stand impossible as Daith,
Incredible as a’thing is
Inside or oot owre closely scanned.
As mithers aften think the warld
O’ bairns that ha’e nae end or object,
Or lovers think their sweethearts made
Yince-yirn—wha haena waled the lave,
Maikless—when they are naebody,
Or men o’ ilka sort and kind
Are prood o’ thochts they ca’ their ain,
That nameless millions had afore
And nameless millions yet’ll ha’e,
And that were never worth the ha’en,
Or Cruivie’s “latest” story or
Gilsanquhar’s vows to sign the pledge,
Or’s if I thocht maist whisky was,
Or failed to coont the cheenge I got,
Sae wad I be gin I rejoiced,
Or didna ken my place, in thee.
O stranglin’ rictus, sterile spasm,
Thou stricture in the groins o’ licht,
Thou ootrie gangrel frae the wilds
O’ chaos fenced frae Eden yet
By the unsplinterable wa’
O’ munebeams like a bleeze o’ swords!
Nae chance lunge cuts the Gordian knot,
Nor sall the belly find relief
In wha’s entangled moniplies
Creation like a stoppage jams,
Or in whose loins the mapamound
Runkles in strawns o’ bubos whaur
The generations gravel.
The soond o’ water winnin’ free,
The sicht o’ licht that braks the rouk,
The thocht o’ every thwart owrecome
Are in my ears and een and brain,
In whom the bluid is spilt in stour,
In whom a’ licht in darkness fails,
In whom the mystery o’ life
Is to a wretched weed bewrayed.
But let my soul increase in me,
God dwarfed to enter my puir thocht
Expand to his true size again,
And protoplasm’s look befit
The nature o’ its destiny,
And seed and sequence be nae mair
Incongruous to ane anither,
And liquor packed impossibly
Mak’ pint-pot an eternal well,
And art be relevant to life,
And poets mair than dominies yet,
And ends nae langer tint in means,
Nor forests hidden by their trees,
Nor men be sacrificed alive
In foonds o’ fates designed for them,
Nor mansions o’ the soul stand toom
Their owners in their cellars trapped,
Nor a’ a people’s genius be
A rumple-fyke in Heaven’s doup,
While Calvinism uses her
To breed a minister or twa!
A black leaf owre a white leaf twirls,
A grey leaf flauchters in atween,
Sae ply my thochts aboot the stem
O’ loppert slime frae which they spring.
The thistle like a snawstorm drives,
Or like a flicht o’ swallows lifts,
Or like a swarm o’ midges hings,
A plague o’ moths, a starry sky,
But’s naething but a thistle yet,
And still the puzzle stands unsolved.
Beauty and ugliness alike,
And life and daith and God and man,
Are aspects o’t but nane can tell
The secret that I’d fain find oot
O’ this bricht hive, this sorry weed,
The tree that fills the universe,
Or like a reistit herrin’ crines.
Gin I was sober I micht think
It was like something drunk men see!
The necromancy in my bluid
Through a’ the gamut cheenges me
O’ dwarf and giant, foul and fair,
But winna let me be mysel’
—My mither’s womb that reins me still
Until I tae can prick the witch
And “Wumman” cry wi’ Christ at last,
“Then what hast thou to do wi’ me?”
The tug-o’-war is in me still,
The dog-hank o’ the flesh and soul,
Faither in Heaven, what gar’d ye tak’
A village slut to mither me,
Your mongrel o’ the fire and clay?
The trollop and the Deity share
My writhen form as tho’ I were
A picture o’ the time they had
When Licht rejoiced to file itsel’
And Earth upshuddered like a star.
A drucken hizzie gane to bed
Wi’ three-in-ane and ane-in-three.
O fain I’d drink until I saw
Scotland a ferlie o’ delicht,
And fain bide drunk nor ha’e’t recede
Into a shrivelled thistle syne,
As when a sperklin’ tide rins oot,
And leaves a wreath o’ rubbish there!
Wull a’ the seas gang dry at last
(As dry as I am gettin’ noo),
Or wull they aye come back again,
Seilfu’ as my neist drink to me,
Or as the sunlicht to the mune,
Or as the bonny sangs o’ men,
Wha’re but puir craturs in themsels,
And save when genius mak’s them drunk,
As donnert as their audiences,
—As dreams that mak’ a tramp a king,
A madman sane to his ain mind,
Or what a Scotsman thinks himsel’,
Tho’ naethin’ but a thistle kyths.
The mair I drink the thirstier yet,
And whiles when I’m alowe wi’ booze,
I’m like God’s sel’ and clad in fire,
And ha’e a Pentecost like this.
O wad that I could aye be fou’,
And no’ come back as aye I maun
To naething but a fule that nane
’Ud credit wi’ sic thochts as thae,
A fule that kens they’re empty dreams!
Yet but fer drink and drink’s effects,
The yeast o’ God that barms in us,
We micht as weel no’ be alive.
It maitters not what drink is ta’en,
The barley bree, ambition, love,
Or Guid or Evil workin’ in’s,
Sae lang’s we feel like souls set free
Frae mortal coils and speak in tongues
We dinna ken and never wull,
And find a merit in oorsels,
In Cruivies and Gilsanquhars tae,
And see the thistle as ocht but that!
For wha o’s ha’e the thistle’s poo’er
To see we’re worthless and believe ’t?
A’thing that ony man can be’s
A mockery o’ his soul at last.
The mair it shows’t the better, and
I’d suner be a tramp than king,
Lest in the pride o’ place and poo’er
I e’er forgot my waesomeness.
Sae to debauchery and dirt,
And to disease and daith I turn,
Sin’ otherwise my seemin’ worth
’Ud block my view o’ what is what,
And blin’ me to the irony
O’ bein’ a grocer ’neth the sun,
A lawyer gin Justice ope’d her een,
A pedant like an ant promoted,
A parson buttonholin’ God,
Or ony cratur o’ the Earth
Sma’-bookt to John Smith, High Street, Perth,
Or sic like vulgar gaffe o’ life
Sub speciem aeternitatis—
Nae void can fleg me hauf as much
As bein’ mysel’, whate’er I am,
Or, waur, bein’ onybody else.
The nervous thistle’s shiverin’ like
A horse’s skin aneth a cleg,
Or Northern Lichts or lustres o’
A soul that Daith has fastened on,
Or mornin’ efter the nicht afore.
Shudderin’ thistle, gi’e owre, gi’e owre....
Grey sand is churnin’ in my lugs
The munelicht flets, and gantin’ there
The grave o’ a’ mankind’s laid bare
—On Hell itsel’ the drawback rugs!
Nae man can ken his hert until
The tide o’ life uncovers it,
And horror-struck he sees a pit
Returnin’ life can never fill!...
Thou art the facts in ilka airt
That breenge into infinity,
Criss-crossed wi’ coontless ither facts
Nae man can follow, and o’ which
He is himsel’ a helpless pairt,
Held in their tangle as he were
A stick-nest in Ygdrasil!
The less man sees the mair he is
Content wi’t, but the mair he sees
The mair he kens hoo little o’
A’ that there is he’ll ever see,
And hoo it mak’s confusion aye
The waur confoondit till at last
His brain inside his heid is like
Ariadne wi’ an empty pirn,
Or like a birlin’ reel frae which
A whale has rived the line awa’.
What better’s a forhooied nest
Than skasloch scattered owre the grun’?
O hard it is for man to ken
He’s no’ creation’s goal nor yet
A benefitter by’t at last—
A means to ends he’ll never ken,
And as to michtier elements
The slauchtered brutes he eats to him
Or forms o’ life owre sma’ to see
Wi’ which his heedless body swarms,
And a’ man’s thocht nae mair to them
Than ony moosewob to a man,
His Heaven to them the blinterin’ o’
A snail-trail on their closet wa’!
For what’s an atom o’ a twig
That tak’s a billion to an inch
To a’ the routh o’ shoots that mak’
The bygrowth o’ the Earth aboot
The michty trunk o’ Space that spreids
Ramel o’ licht that ha’e nae end,
—The trunk wi’ centuries for rings,
Comets for fruit, November shooers
For leafs that in its Autumns fa’
—And Man at maist o’ sic a twig
Ane o’ the coontless atoms is!
My sinnens and my veins are but
As muckle o’ a single shoot
Wha’s fibre I can ne’er unwaft
O’ my wife’s flesh and mither’s flesh
And a’ the flesh o’ humankind,
And revelled thrums o’ beasts and plants
As gangs to mak’ twixt birth and daith
A’e sliver for a microscope;
And a’ the life o’ Earth to be
Can never lift frae underneath
The shank o’ which oor destiny’s pairt
As heich’s to stand forenenst the trunk
Stupendous as a windlestrae!
I’m under nae delusions, fegs!
The whuppin’ sooker at wha’s tip
Oor little point o’ view appears,
A midget coom o’ continents
Wi’ blebs o’ oceans set, sends up
The braith o’ daith as weel as life,
And we maun braird anither tip
Oot owre us ere we wither tae,
And join the sentrice skeleton
As coral insects big their reefs.
What is the tree? As fer as Man’s
Concerned it disna maitter
Gin but a giant thistle ’tis
That spreids eternal mischief there,
As I’m inclined to think.
Ruthless it sends its solid growth
Through mair than he can e’er conceive,
And braks his warlds abreid and rives
His Heavens to tatters on its horns.
The nature or the purpose o’t
He needna fash to spier, for he
Is destined to be sune owre grown
And hidden wi’ the parent wud
The spreidin’ boughs in darkness hap,
And a’ its future life’ll be
Ootwith’m as he’s ootwith his banes.
Juist as man’s skeleton has left
Its ancient ape-like shape ahint,
Sae states o’ mind in turn gi’e way
To different states, and quickly seem
Impossible to later men,
And Man’s mind in its final shape,
Or lang’ll seem a monkey’s spook,
And, strewth, to me the vera thocht
O’ Thocht already’s fell like that!
Yet still the cracklin’ thorns persist
In fitba’ match and peepy show,
To antic hay a dog-fecht’s mair
Than Jacob v. the Angel,
And through a cylinder o’ wombs,
A star reflected in a dub,
I see as ’twere my ain wild harns
The ripple o’ Eve’s moniplies.
And faith! yestreen in Cruivie’s een
Life rocked at midnicht in a tree,
And in Gilsanquhar’s glower I saw
The taps o’ waves ’neth which the warld
Ga’ed rowin’ like a jeelyfish,
And whiles I canna look at Jean
For fear I’d see the sunlicht turn
Worm-like into the glaur again!
A black leaf owre a white leaf twirls,
My liver’s shadow on my soul,
And clots o’ bluid loup oot frae stems
That back into the jungle rin,
Or in the waters underneath
Kelter like seaweed, while I hear
Abune the thunder o’ the flood,
The voice that aince commanded licht
Sing ‘Scots Wha Ha’e’ and hyne awa’
Like Cruivie up a different glen,
And leave me like a mixture o’
A wee Scotch nicht and Judgment Day,
The bile, the Bible, and the Scotsman,
Poetry and pigs—Infernal Thistle,
Damnition haggis I’ve spewed up,
And syne return to like twa dogs!
Blin’ Proteus wi’ leafs or hands
Or flippers ditherin’ in the lift
—Thou Samson in a warld that has
Nae pillars but your cheengin’ shapes
That dung doon, rise in ither airts
Like windblawn reek frae smoo’drin’ ess!
—Hoo lang maun I gi’e aff your forms
O’ plants and beasts and men and Gods
And like a doited Atlas bear
This steeple o’ fish, this eemis warld,
Or, maniac heid wi’ snakes for hair,
A Maenad, ape Aphrodite,
And scunner the Eternal sea?
Man needna fash and even noo
The cells that mak’ a’e sliver wi’m,
The threidy knit he’s woven wi’,
’Ud fain destroy what sicht he has
O’ this puir transitory stage,
Yet tho’ he kens the fragment is
O’ little worth he e’er can view,
Jalousin’ it’s a cheatrie weed,
He tyauves wi’ a’ his micht and main
To keep his sicht despite his kind
Conspirin’ as their nature is
’Gainst ocht wi’ better sicht than theirs.
What gars him strive? He canna tell—
It may be nocht but cussedness.
—At best he hopes for little mair
Than his suspicions to confirm,
To mock the sicht he hains sae weel
At last wi’ a’ he sees wi’ it,
Yet, thistle or no’ whate’er its end,
Aiblins the force that mak’s it grow
And lets him see a kennin’ mair
Than ither folk and fend his sicht
Agen their jealous plots awhile
’ll use the poo’ers it seems to waste,
This purpose ser’d, in ither ways,
That may be better worth the bein’
—Or sae he dreams, syne mocks his dream
Till Life grows sheer awa’ frae him,
And bratts o’ darkness plug his een.
It may be nocht but cussedness,
But I’m content gin a’ my thocht
Can dae nae mair than let me see,
Free frae desire o’ happiness,
The foolish faiths o’ ither men
In breedin’, industry, and War,
Religion, Science, or ocht else
Gang smash—when I ha’e nane mysel’,
Or better gin I share them tae,
Or mind at least a time I did!
Aye, this is Calvary—to bear
Your Cross wi’in you frae the seed,
And feel it grow by slow degrees
Until it rends your flesh apairt,
And turn, and see your fellow-men
In similar case but sufferin’ less
Thro’ bein’ mair wudden frae the stert!...