I passed a piper belting out tourist tunes in Union Sq on my way in to work at the end of last week and I smiled thinking that, even in the heart of Manhattan, I wasn't too far away from the Royal Mile. A few hours later I read in the Guardian that
Edwin Morgan, the Scottish Poet Laureate and the poet that scored my (and many a Scottish teen's) high school English Lit classes, had passed away. It might strike some as kailyard nostalgia, but both sure made me feel homesick.
Morgan's genius lyrics
Strawberries, King Billy,
One Cigarette and
Trio (amongst many, many others) electrified my sheltered mind at sixteen. Which other poet covers gay lust, sectarianism, witty concrete poetry, rape, class consciousness, identity struggle, and pays homage to the gritty industrial beauty of Glasgow while avoiding self-importance or precipitous misery - all within the space of one English class? Morgan's poems remain for me powerful examples of how words can really transform the way one thinks, wants to act, wants to write, and wants to remember.
R.I.P Mr. Morgan.
Trio
Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights -
The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua.
And the three of them are laughing, their breath rises
in a cloud of happiness, and as they pass
the boy says, "Wait till he sees this but!"
The chihuahua has a tiny Royal Stewart tartan coat like a teapot-holder,
the baby in its white shawl is all bright eyes and mouth like
favours in a fresh sweet cake,
the guitar swells out under its milky plastic cover, tied at the neck
with silver tinsel tape and a brisk sprig of mistletoe.
Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!
The vale of tears is powerless before you.
Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you
put paid to fate, it abdicates
under the Christmas lights.
Monsters of the year
go blank, are scattered back,
can't bear this march of three.
And the three have passed, vanished in the crowd
(yet not vanished, for in their arms they wind
the life of men and beasts, and music,
laughter ringing them round like a guard)
at the end of this winter's day
