Part 3

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!...

_I’m fu’ o’ a stickit God._ THAT’S _what’s the maitter wi’ me, Jean has stuck sic a fork in the wa’ That I row in agonie_.

_Mary never let dab._ SHE _was a canny wumman_. _She hedna a gaw in Joseph at a’ But, wow, this seecund comin’!_...

_Narodbogonosets_[10] are my folk tae, But in a sma’ way nooadays— A faitherly God wi’ a lang white beard, Or painted Jesus in a haze O’ blue and gowd, a gird aboot his heid Or some sic thing. It’s been a sair come-doon, And the trade’s nocht to what it was. Unnatural practices are the cause. Baith bairns and Gods’ll be obsolete soon (The twaesome gang thegither), and forsooth Scotland turn Eliot’s waste—the Land o’ Drouth.

But even as the stane the builders rejec’ Becomes the corner-stane, the time may be When Scotland sall find oot its destiny, And yield the _vse-chelovek_.[11] —At a’ events, owre Europe flaught atween, My whim (and mair than whim) it pleases To seek the haund o’ Russia as a freen’ In workin’ oot mankind’s great synthesis....

Melville[12] (a Scot) kent weel hoo Christ’s Corrupted into creeds malign, Begotten strife’s pernicious brood That claims for patron Him Divine. (The Kirk in Scotland still I cry Crooks whaur it canna crucify!)

Christ, bleedin’ like the thistle’s roses, He saw—as I in similar case— Maistly, in beauty and in fear, ’Ud “paralyse the nobler race, Smite or suspend, perplex, deter, And, tortured, prove the torturer.”

And never mair a Scot sall tryst, Abies on Calvary, wi’ Christ, Unless, mebbe, a poem like this’ll Exteriorise things in a thistle, And gi’e him in this form forlorn What Melville socht in vain frae Hawthorne....

Spirit o’ strife, destroy in turn Syne this fule’s Paradise, syne that; In thee’s in Calvaries that owrecome Daith efter Daith let me be caught,

Or in the human form that hauds Us in its ignominious thrall, While on brute needs oor souls attend Until disease and daith end all,

Or in the grey deluded brain, Reflectin’ in anither field The torments o’ its parent flesh In thocht-preventin’ thocht concealed,

Or still in curst impossible mould, Last thistle-shape men think to tak’, The soul, frae flesh and thocht set free, On Heaven’s strait if unseen rack.

There may be heicher forms in which We can nae mair oor plicht define, Because the agonies involved ’ll bring us their ain anodyne.

Yet still we suffer and still sall, Altho’, puir fules, we mayna kent As lang as like the thistle we In coil and in recoil are pent.

And ferrer than mankind can look Ghast shapes that free but to transfix Twine rose-crooned in their agonies, And strive agen the endless pricks.

The dooble play that bigs and braks In endless victory and defeat Is in your spikes and roses shown, And a’ my soul is haggar’d wi’t....

Be like the thistle, O my soul, Heedless o’ praise and quick to tak’ affront, And growin’ like a mockery o’ a’ Maist life can want or thole, And manifest forevermair Contempt o’ ilka goal.

O’ ilka goal—save ane alane; To be yoursel’, whatever that may be, And as contemptuous o’ that, Kennin’ nocht’s worth the ha’en, But certainty that nocht can be, And hoo that certainty to gain.

For this you still maun grow and grope In the abyss wi’ ever-deepenin’ roots That croon your scunner wi’ the grue O’ hopeless hope —And gin the abyss is bottomless, Your growth’ll never stop!...