The Sunday Posts 2017/ Hush Hush

Hush, hush, time tae be sleepin'.
Hush, hush, dreams come a-creepin';
Dreams of peace and of freedom,
So smile in your sleep, bonny baby.

Once, our valleys were ringin'
with sounds of our children singin',
but now, sheep bleat 'til the evenin'
and shielings stand empty and broken.


Hush, hush, time tae be sleepin'.
Hush, hush, dreams come a-creepin';
Dreams of peace and of freedom,
So smile in your sleep, bonny baby.

Where stands our proud Highland mettle?
Our men, once sae feared in battle
now stand, cowed, huddled like cattle,
and soon tae be shipped o'er the ocean.

Oh, we stood with our heads bowed in prayer
while Factors laid our cottages bare.
The flames fired the clear mountain air,
and many were dead in the mornin'.

Hush, hush, time tae be sleepin'.
Hush, hush, dreams come a-creepin';
Dreams of peace and of freedom,
So smile in your sleep, bonny baby.

Nae use greetin' or prayin' now.
Gone. Gone, all hopes of stayin',
sae hush, now. The anchor's a-weighin'.
Don't cry in your sleep, bonny baby.

Hush, hush, time tae be sleepin'.
Hush, hush, dreams come a-creepin';
Dreams of peace and of freedom,
So smile in your sleep, bonny baby.

The Sunday Posts 2017/ Breaking News

We interrupt this poem to bring you reports
of an explosion

of wild untruths and other signs that the news
is broken.

Early indications from those who were first
on the scene

have led to widespread fears of another Sweden
or Bowling Green

and that peace might erupt at any moment
in other places.

It is believed that amongst the rubble of reality
were found traces

of humanity and an understanding that stretches
beyond borders.

Many experts predict this will lead to a new wave
of presidential orders

for such trumped-up charges form part of
a familiar pattern.

But back to the poem: we’ll bring you more news
as it doesn’t happen.

Brian Bilston

The Sunday posts 2017/ Brexit In Pursuit Of A Bear

Please look out for this bear. Thank you.
He's been getting ideas above his station.
If found please hand him in to the Home Office.
Section: UK Visas and Immigration.

He is wearing a blue duffel coat,
Red wellies and a wide brimmed hat
in an attempt to look like one of us
but do not be fooled by that.

He's one of those funny foreign types,
who try to come here nowadays
to take our homes and steal our jobs
and eat our Great Nation's marmalade.

It is thought he may have terrorist connections
and may be planning to do us harm
so please beware of his hard stare
not to mention his right to bear arms.

Also reported in this area.
Illegal economic migrant
Great Uncle Bulgaria.

Brian Bilston

The Sunday Posts 2016/ Da Night at Christ wis Boarn

A lass, wis gaen ta cry,
ta Bethlehem cam, weary an makkin maen,
an fan dey wir nae wye
ta lay her doon, for aa da beds wis taen.

Da lodgin-mistress said
da byre wid hae ta du dem, till da moarn:
dere, twa clean windlins spread
athin an empty stall, Goad’s Bairn wis boarn.

 

A peerie whaig, wi a starn
athin her broo, wis tied apo da waak,
an, inbye i da barn,
wi sleepy peesters, hens upo da baak.

Whin aa wis ower an düne
da Midder’s een droopit in sweet relief;
Joseph sat winderin on
dis marvel at wis nearly past belief.

 

Dan suddenly, da lift
wis filled wi light an singin fae abüne! –
as Pretty Dancers shift,
sae moved da singers o da heevenly tüne,

an whin dey aa wir geen,
doon da lang hilly gait da shepherds cam,
winderin what hit might mean –
an ane wis kerryin a ting o lamb.

 

Dey cam in trow, an bent
afore da Infant in a glüd o light:
intae demsels, withoot a doot dey kent
hunders o years wid hear aboot dis night.

 

Stella Sutherland.

Photo Cathar Memorial, Minerve, Languedoc.

By Alistair.

 

     

 

In Memoriam. One Hundred Years On

Written For Private D. Sutherland
killed in action in the German trench,
and the others who died

So you were David’s father,

And he was your only son,

And the new-cut peats are rotting

And the work is left undone,

Because of an old man weeping,

Just an old man in pain,

For David, his son David,

That will not come again.

Oh, the letters he wrote you,

And I can see them still,

Not a word of the fighting,

But just the sheep on the hill

And how you should get the crops in

Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,

And I was his officer.

You were only David’s father,

But I had fifty sons

When we went up in the evening

Under the arch of the guns,

And we came back at twilight - 

O God! I heard them call

To me for help and pity

That could not help at all.

Oh, never will I forget you,

My men that trusted me,

More my sons than your fathers’,
For they could only see

The little helpless babies 

And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,

And hold you while you died.

Happy and young and gallant,

They saw their first-born go,

But not the strong limbs broken

And the beautiful men brought low,

The piteous writhing bodies,

The screamed ‘Don’t leave me, Sir’,

For they were only your fathers

But I was your officer.

E. Alan Mackintosh

The Sunday Posts 2016/ Galaxy Song

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs.Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enough

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the 'milky way'

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go 'round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth

Eric Idle.

The Sunday Posts 2016/ You've Got A Friend

When you're down and troubled,
And you need some love and care,
And nothing, nothing is going right
Close your eyes and think of me,
And soon I will be there
To brighten up even your darkest night.

You just call out my name
And you know wherever I am
I'll come running to see you again
Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I'll be there
You've got a friend

If the sky above you grows dark and full of clouds
And that old north wind begins to blow
Keep your head together and call my name out loud
Soon you'll hear me knocking at your door


You just call out my name
And you know wherever I am
I'll come running to see you again
Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I'll be there
You've got a friend

Carole King
Photo by Alistair.

The Sunday Posts 2015/In an Artist's Studio

 One face looks out from all his canvasses,
   One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;
   We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
   A nameless girl in freshest summer greens,
   A saint, an angel;--every canvass means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
   And she with true kind eyes looks back on him
Fair as the moon and joyfull as the light;
   Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
   Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

Christina Rossetti

The Sunday Posts 2016/ For Orlando

England is a cup of tea
France, a wheel of ripened Brie
Greece a short,squat olive tree
America is a gun.

Brazil is football in the sand
Argentina, Madonna's hand
Germany is an Oompah band
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe
Hungary, a goulash stew
Australia, a kangaroo
America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring
Scotland, a highland fling
Oh, better to be anything
Than America as a gun.

Brian Bilston
Photo by Alistair.

The Sunday Posts 2015/ Culloden Moor - seen in Autumn rain

Full of grief, the low winds sweep
O'er the sorrow-haunted ground;
Dark the woods where night rains weep,
Dark the hills that watch around.

Tell me, can the joys of spring
Ever make this sadness flee,
Make the woods with music ring,
And the streamlet laugh for glee?

When the summer moor is lit
With the pale fire of the broom,
And through green the shadows flit,
Still shall mirth give place to gloom?

Sad shall it be, though sun be shed
Golden bright on field and flood;
E'en the heather's crimson red
Holds the memory of blood.

Here that broken, weary band
Met the ruthless foe's array,
Where those moss-grown boulders stand,
On that dark and fatal day.

Like a phantom hope had fled,
Love to death was all in vain,
Vain, though heroes' blood was shed,
And though hearts were broke in twain.

Many a voice has cursed the name
Time has into darkness thrust,
Cruelty his only fame
In forgetfulness and dust.

Noble dead that sleep below,
We your valour ne'er forget;
Soft the heroes' rest who know
Hearts like theirs are beating yet.

Alice McDonnell of Keppoch
Photo by Alistair.

The Sunday Posts 2016/ The Messengers

Arriving late sometimes and never
Quite expected, still they come,
Bringing a folded meaning home
Between the lines, inside the letter.

As a scarecrow in the harvest
Turns an innocent field to grief
These tattered hints are dumb and deaf,
But bring the matter to a crisis.

They are the messengers who run
Onstage to us who try to doubt them,
Fetching our fate to hand; without them
What would Sophocles have done?

Muriel Spark
Photo by Alistair.

The Sunday Posts 2016/Helen Keller

She,
In the dark,
Found light
Brighter than many ever see.
She,
Within herself,
Found loveliness,
Through the soul's own mastery.
And now the world receives
From her dower:
The message of the strength
Of inner power.   

By Langston Hughes

The Sunday Posts 2016/ Valentines Day

Sure Proof

I can no more describe you
than I can put a thing for the first time
where it already is.

If I could make a ladder of light
or comb the hair of a dream girl with a real comb
or pour a table into a jug...

I'm not good at impossible things
And that is why I'm sure
I will love you for my ever.

Norman MacCaig. 1968
Photo by Alistair

The Sunday Posts 2016/ Let Me Die A Young Mans Death

Let me die a young man's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good humour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an all-night party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a young man's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death   

Roger McGough.
Photo By Alistair.  

The Sunday Posts 2016/what did you learn in school today

What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody's free.
And that's what the teacher said to me.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.

What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that policemen are my friends.
I learned that justice never ends.
I learned that murderers die for their crimes.
Even if we make a mistake sometimes.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.

What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned our government must be strong.
It's always right and never wrong.
Our leaders are the finest men.
And we elect them again and again.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.

What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that war is not so bad.
I learned of the great ones we have had.
We fought in Germany and in France.
And some day I might get my chance.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.

Tom Paxton
Photo by Alistair.

The Sunday Posts 2016/Summons to Burns Nicht

KING GEORDIE issues out his summons,
Tae ca his bairns, the Lairds an Commons,
Tae creesh the nation's moolie-heels,
An butter Commerce' rusty wheels,
An see what new, what untried tax,
Will lie the easiest on oor backs.
The priest convenes his scandal court,
Tae ken what houghmagandie sport
Has been gaun on within the parish
Since last they met,—their funds tae cherish.

But I, the servant of Apollo,
Whase mandates I am proud tae follow,—
He bids me warn you as the friend
Of Burns's fame, that ye'll attend
Neist Friday e'en, in Luckie Wricht's,
Tae spend the best—the wale o nichts ;
Sae, under pain o ha'f-a-merk
Ye'll come, as signed by me, the Clerk.

Unknown.

The Sunday Posts 2015/ The Rose

Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger,
An endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower,
And you its only seed.

It's the heart afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking
That never takes the chance.
It's the one who won't be taken,
Who cannot seem to give,
And the soul afraid of dyin'
That never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed that with the sun's love
In the spring becomes the rose.

Bette Midler
Photo by Alistair

The Sunday Posts 2015/ Grandmother

By the time I knew my grandmother she was dead.

Before that she was where I thought she stood,

Spectacles, slippers, venerable head,

A standard-issue twinkle in her eyes –

Familiar stage-props of grandmotherhood.

It took her death to teach me they were lies. 

My sixteen-year-old knowingness was shocked

To hear her family narrate her past

In quiet nostalgic chorus. As they talked

Her body stiffened on the muted fast

Though well washed linen coverlet of her bed.

The kitchen where we sat, a room I knew,

Took on a strangeness with each word they said.

How she was born where wealth was pennies, grew

Into a woman before she was a girl,

From dirt and pain constructed happiness,

Shed youth’s dreams in the fierce sweat of a mill,

Married and mothered in her sixteenth year,

Fed children from her own mouth’s emptiness

In an attic rats owned half of, liked her beer.

Careless, they scattered pictures: mother, wife,

Strikes lived through, hard concessions bought and sold

In a level-headed bargaining with life,

Told anecdotes in which her strength rang gold,

Her eyes were clear, her wants as plain as salt.

 

The past became a mint from which they struck

Small change till that room glittered like a vault.

The corpse in the other room became to me

Awesome as pharaoh now, as if one look

Would show me all that I had failed to see. 

The kitchen became museum in my sight,

Sacred as church. These were the very chairs

In which her gnarled dignity grew frail.

Her hard-won pride had kept these brasses bright.

Her tireless errands were etched upon the stairs.

A vase shone in the sun, holy as grail.

I wanted to bring others to this room,

Say it’s nothing else than this that people mean.

A place to which humility can come,

A wrested niche where no one else has been

Won from the wastes of broken worlds and worse.

Here we can stay, stupid and false, of course.

Themselves to the living is all we have to give.

Let this be

To her, for wreath, gift, true apology.

 

William Mclvanney

Photo from family archive.

The Sunday Posts 2015/ Smokey The Cat

Smokey the cat came from nowhere;
Just whisped in under some door;
Sniffed quietly around
And knew that she'd found
The best place to stay in Bowmore.

She'd arrived at Bowmore distillery
Where the finest malt whisky is made.
There was no welcome mat
For Smokey the cat
But she liked the place - so she stayed.

They say cats have more than one life
With re-incarnation and that.
Whether it's true
All that cat déja vu,
Smokey's a born again cat.

There's something about her that takes you
Back to the Lords of the Isles
When the cats of Finlaggan
Would go scallywaggin'
For miles and miles and miles.

It's the way she melts into the shadows
Or suddenly creeps up on folk
She'll always find you
Slinking behind you
The cat who was named after smoke.

She sits on the sill of the maltings
On days when the weather is nice
And while one eye sleeps
The other one keeps
A lookout for small birds and mice.

Small birds and mice eat the barley
So Smokey confronts them foursquare
But she pulls in her claws
And quietly ignores
The Angels who come for their share.

Felines don't care for whisky
Everyone understands that
But that peaty odour
Beneath the pagoda
Owes something to Smokey the cat.

On Islay people made whisky
Long before it was chic.
The cat from Bowmore
Is nothing more
Than the ghost of the island's peat-reek

Robin Laing

The Sunday Posts 2015/Love Over Gold

You walk out on the high wire
you're a dancer on thin ice
you pay no heed to the danger
and less to advice
your footsteps are forbidden
but with a knowledge of your sin
you throw your love to all the strangers
and caution to the wind

And you go dancing through doorways
just to see what you will find
leaving nothing to interfere
with the crazy balance of your mind
and when you finally reappear
at the place where you came in
you've thrown your love to all the strangers
and caution to the wind

It takes love over gold
and mind over matter
to do what you do that you must
when the things that you hold
can fall and be shattered
or run through your fingers like dust

Mark Knopfler
Painting: Girl on a Bicycle by Joseph Crawhall.