The Sunday Posts 2015/ This Bitter Earth

This bitter earth
What fruit it bears
What good is love
That no one shares?
And if my life is like the dust
That hides the glow of a rose
What good am I?
Heaven only knows

This bitter earth
Can it be so cold?
Today you're young
Too soon your old
But while a voice
Within me cries
I'm sure someone
May answer my call
And this bitter earth
May not be so bitter after all

Deborah Cox
Photo by Alistair.

The Sunday Posts 2015/The Right Honourable Eyelash’s Summer Panic

For readers outside the UK, Andy Burnham is a candidate for the leadership of the British Labour Party. He has a video on Youtube touting his credentials as Mr. Everyman. It is said he is entirely made of plastic, a sort of man for all reasons. There's more info in this article in the Guardian.

Here is Irish poet Kevin Higgins' contribution to the Burnham saga.

This is not the gas

I’d hoped to be passing here today.

I wish I was able to tell you

a government of me

would starve useless

eaters of bacon butties

and deep fried Cadbury’s Cream Eggs

in Dundee and Sunderland

just a little more slowly than this government

is so brutally doing at present;

that under me

every old age pensioner,

like the old lady across the road

who died last year of the winter, will receive

their own personal nuclear submarine.

Sadly, recent polls

have rendered such dreams

politically impossible.

As things stand, for half a vote

I’d happily come around and polish

your baby’s bottom;

play hide and seek

with your pet hippopotamus;

tell you no student should have to pay

for university by going on the game

more than five nights a week;

mow your lawn;

nationalise the railways; or cure 

your husband’s baldness.

Between now and elect-me-day

if you need someone to plant

slobbery kisses on your elderly uncle’s

surprise third buttock,

anything you want, I am it.

The Sunday Posts 2015/ oor Wullie

Fair fa' your rosy-cheekit face,
Your muckle buits, wi' broken lace,
Although you're always in disgrace,
An' get your spanks,
In all our hearts ye have your place,
Despite your pranks.  Your towsy held, your dungarees,
Your wee snub nose, your dirty knees,
Your knack o' seeming tae displease
Your Ma an' Pa.
We dinna care a tuppenny sneeze
We think you're braw.  You're wee, an' nae twa ways aboot it,
You're wise, wi' very few tae doot it,
You're wild, there's nane that wad dispute it,
Around the toon. But maist o a' ye are reputit
A lauchin' loon.  Weel-kent, weel-liked, you're aye the same,
Tae Scots abroad and Scots at hame.
North, south, east, west, your weel-won fame
Shall never sully.
We'll aye salute that couthie name:
Oor Wullie.

Unknown.

muckle=large
towsy=untidy
braw=fine
lauchin' loon=laughing boy
weel-kent=well known
aye=always
couthie=friendly

The Sunday Posts 2015/Linguist

If we lived in a world where bells
truly say 'ding-dong' and where 'moo'
is a rather neat thing
said by a cow,
I could believe you could believe
that these sounds I make in the air
and these shapes with which I blacken white paper
have some reference
to the thoughts in my mind
and the the feelings in the thoughts.

As things are
if I were to gaze in your eyes and say
'bow-wow' or 'quack' you must take that to be
a dispairing anthology of praises'
a concentration of the opposites
of reticence, a capsule
of my meaning of meaning
that I can no more write down
than I could spell the sound of the sigh
I would then utter, before
dingdonging and mooing my way
through all the lexicons and languages
of imprecision.

 Norman MacCaig, October 1964.
Photo by Alistair

 

The Sunday Posts 2015/ The Last To Leave

                                                   Over The Top {Gallipoli 1915}

The guns were silent, and the silent hills
had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze
I gazed upon the vales and on the rills,
And whispered, “What of these?’ and “What of these?
These long forgotten dead with sunken graves,
Some crossless, with unwritten memories
Their only mourners are the moaning waves,
Their only minstrels are the singing trees
And thus I mused and sorrowed wistfully

I watched the place where they had scaled the height,
The height whereon they bled so bitterly
Throughout each day and through each blistered night
I sat there long, and listened – all things listened too
I heard the epics of a thousand trees,
A thousand waves I heard; and then I knew
The waves were very old, the trees were wise:
The dead would be remembered evermore-
The valiant dead that gazed upon the skies,
And slept in great battalions by the shore.

Leon Gellert, Australian Gallipoli veteran, 1924

The Sunday Posts2015/The News Where You Are

That’s all from us.

 

 Now it’s time for the news where you are.

 

The news where you are comes after the news where we are. The news where we are is the news. It comes first. The news where you are is the news where you are. It comes after. We do not have the news where you are. The news where you are may be news to you but it is not news to us.

 

The news may be international, national or regional. The news where we are may be international news. The news where you are is never international news. Where you are is not international. The news where you are comes after the international and national news.

 

The news where you are may be national news or regional news. However, national news where you are is not national news where we are. It is the news where you are.

If the news where you are is national news it is only national where you are.

The news where we are is national wherever you are.

 

On Saturdays, there is no news where you are after the news where we are. In fact there is no news where you are on Saturdays. Any news there is, is not where you are. It is where we are. If there is news where you are but not where we are it will wait until Sunday.

 

After the news where you are comes the weather.

 

The weather where you are is not the national weather. The weather where you are comes after the news where you are, and after the weather where you are comes the national weather. Do not confuse the national weather with the weather where you are. The weather where you are comes first but is lesser weather than the national weather.

 

Extreme weather is news. However, weather that is more extreme where you are than where we are is not news. Weather that is extreme where we are is news, even if extreme weather where we are is only average weather where you are.

 

On average, weather where you are is more extreme than weather where we are.

 

Tough shit.

 

Good night.

 

John Robertson.

The Sunday Posts 2015/ If I Should Have A Daughter