Summer of Love
In a farming parish full of hills and honey
Catriona had many suitors
The cowherd dogged her steps each summer evening
As did the quiet widower from Glen Shiel
The laird’s eyes followed her round the Lammas fair
Three girls the blacksmith courted, quick and lusty
And each one filling up with his planted seed
Love can be a path of stones and tares
It starts with strewn flowers, and ends in tears
She turned the butter churn, near burst its sides
Never were farmhouse flags so fiercely scrubbed
And every night she stared at the horned moon
While the cattle grumbled and coughed in the moonlit byre
Now Love’s bitter bloom had taken root
Too late she’d waited, hoping to win him over
So no one thought it at all the least unusual
When the bog gave up two bodies that windy Autumn
Love can be a path of stones and tares
It starts with strewn flowers, and ends in tears
The Haywain
A sardonic string bean jogger who loved Bellini,
murdered by a mugger in the park
A guffawing graffiti artist, with septicaemia
A jovial Japanese postman from Chicago,
struck by a taxi speeding through a light
A happy slapper manicure assistant,
polished off by cancer in her prime
A prisoner with Aids, swops one grim cell for another
A player whose final act was suicide,
after a string of scurrilous reviews
A recluse whose untuned harpsichord burned with her
A ballerina culled by anorexia,
worn away to a shadow of herself
A babe whose superflous feet dropped down a well
An Army general felled by a ski-slope trip
A vegetable seller blown to bits by a bomb
A Baptist missionary swallowed by a cyclone
The haywain hurls them all to their destination
Gritty granules of narratives and bones
Autumn Bride
The truth is I was born frozen, I seldom ever thaw
I wish I had said ‘I’m going! ’ and slammed the door
That windy Autumn
But I needed proof that the world outside was safe
What if I’d gone outside to a firing squad?
For the first time ever, the bullets might have been real
Moon
Once upon a time, the moon lived in a book
When I turned the page, a cow came out of the corn
Like a shining child wearing a golden halo
It surprised me when the moon over the loch was a giant face
It was no use pretending it wasn’t there
It was monstrous, immense, an ogre
Panic
Panic lives in a box
Like a squashed balloon
It smells like roasted butterflies
Like singed cobwebs
It sounds like the silent scream
From a rabbit with myxomatosis
It tastes like barbed wire
Constricting the tongue
It feels like needles
Stuck in the heart’s cushion
It lives in the dark,
A furtive, hidden thing
Drop it, and it races around
Screeching ‘Flee flee! ’
And it seems like your feet are on fire
Ode to Sugar
This sugar
Could be the death of me
In the diabetic minefield that is food
Spread on buttered bread
It’s poor man’s jam
Wasps swoon for it
Bees hunger for it
It’s beaten to a pulp from canes
It’s the essence of slavery
With no trace of the sweat of salt
Stir it in tea, or coffee
It performs its vanishing trick
It turned the Virgin Queen’s teeth
Black as tar
The Day Paul Summers Died
The local grocer slashed the price of butter
Mrs Chang-Lee dropped an earring down the drain
No mail arrived at the house with the whitewashed fence
Neighbours agreed the weather was going to be stormy
The Webster’s daughter cut her first milk tooth
Mrs Bitajee was frying lamb and potatoes
The market was alive with tourist shoppers
The picnic on the green was a disaster
The cat on Crooked Lane was scratching fleas
A sudden wind blew sand along the street
Travellers pitched their vans on the footbhall pitch
‘Whose going to pay for the funeral? ’ the doctor wondered.
Panda-monium
Pandas pee up in the air
Creating a spray for their hair
It’s an odd thing to do
Better urine than poo
That’s why mating ‘tween pandas is rare
The Yak
How I’d love to parade on a yak
With a leg on each side of its back!
If the heavens should rain
You might hear me complain
Has anyone here got a mac?
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem