Liz Lochhead Poems

Down on her hands and knees
at ten at night on Hogmanay,
my mother still giving it elbowgrease
jiffywaxing the vinolay. (This is too
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weather evocative as scent
the romance of dark stormclouds
in big skies over the low wide river
of long shadows and longer shafts of light
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be garlanded;
the poet's head
should be innocent of the leaves of the sweet bay tree,
twisted. All honour goes to poetry.
...

Trouble is not my middle name.
It is not what I am.
I was not born for this.
Trouble is not a place
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is peopled with many surfaces.
Ormolu and gilt, slipper satin,
lush velvet couches,
cushions so stiff you can't sink in.
...

Molly Pin Li McLaren,
come home and look
at the pictures in your brand-new book -
a tree, a bird, a fish, a bell,
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The river in January is fast and high.
You and I
are off to the Barrows.
Gathering police-horses twitch and fret
at the Tron end of London Road and Gallowgate.
...

The present author being, from her mother's milk,
a lover of the poetic effusions of Mr Robert Burns and
all creatures therein (whether mouse, louse, yowe, dug
or grey mare Meg) was nonetheless appalled to find,
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"If freedom an whisky gang thegither": Robert Burns

i.
When we sit wined and finely dined,
Dressed up in oor best, braw and fancy,
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There is no need they say
but the needles still move
their rhythms in the working of your hands
as easily
as if your hands
...