Thoughts on Robert Burns
Now Burns night has been and gone I thought I'd share with you a poem I wrote in December in honour of the Scottish bard who spokeand wrote and sang for all the world...
So simply precious, thatKilmarnock treasuryOF POEMSChiefly in the Scottish Dialect
Thoughts of Robert Burns
January seventeen fifty nine, cold winter's day, old Alloway:to Scottish farming stockwas born a boy, and what a boy was this, this Robert, Rabbie Burns or Burnes (with or without the 'e')who grew into a shining star ascending to arc the firmament,changed words to arrows, plain, or in the Scotsman's dialectthat, flashing out to everyone, pierced, lifting up their heartswith things as small as harvest miceor wise and wonderful, the parts beyond imagining or any price.
To him a man was just a man for all that and for all thatfrom wheresoe're on earth he springsso long as straight, within his time he honesty and humour brings.
If music be the food of poets' lovefrom deep inside his ancientScottish roots Rab culled the songsthat have become immortal, and, when any exile for his homeland longsfoursquare with that man Rabbie stands. Like every caring working man Burns strove to feed his family by dint and stint of plough and pen,and later roved the lowland roadson business for His Majesty.Yet all his life the songsmith poet also knew the need to feed his views egalitarian and his muse and found his provender for thisin places often frowned on by his peers and his superiors,like rough and bawdy fairs, alehouses and in the arms, the eyes, the lips of bonnie Scotland's womankind:but look, he only reached out therebelieving true he was in love, (as well as by her truly loved), and with her all the pleasures proved, compared his heart with that undying rose; that red, red rosethat's newly sprung in June, thatmelody that's never out of tune
Ploughman poet Robert Burns, like some volcanic rock afire, that's hurled up high, so high above mere commonplace mundanityof heat suffice to set alight the sullen earth, the endless sky,oh yes, too bright for many folkof its own time to look at, see,shedding as it goes in some greatwild parabola, poetic sparks and soon this melting rock slowed, fell away and cooled, and,sighing, met with careless deathas all things must,so Rabbie all too soon expelled his final breath.
Burns is never lost to memory: this man of rock, this poet shall within my time abide with me;tell in ways and words ethereal that to live is more than just to be.
Bryan Islipfor the Wester-Ross Burns Club meeting20 December 2011
So simply precious, thatKilmarnock treasuryOF POEMSChiefly in the Scottish Dialect
Thoughts of Robert Burns
January seventeen fifty nine, cold winter's day, old Alloway:to Scottish farming stockwas born a boy, and what a boy was this, this Robert, Rabbie Burns or Burnes (with or without the 'e')who grew into a shining star ascending to arc the firmament,changed words to arrows, plain, or in the Scotsman's dialectthat, flashing out to everyone, pierced, lifting up their heartswith things as small as harvest miceor wise and wonderful, the parts beyond imagining or any price.
To him a man was just a man for all that and for all thatfrom wheresoe're on earth he springsso long as straight, within his time he honesty and humour brings.
If music be the food of poets' lovefrom deep inside his ancientScottish roots Rab culled the songsthat have become immortal, and, when any exile for his homeland longsfoursquare with that man Rabbie stands. Like every caring working man Burns strove to feed his family by dint and stint of plough and pen,and later roved the lowland roadson business for His Majesty.Yet all his life the songsmith poet also knew the need to feed his views egalitarian and his muse and found his provender for thisin places often frowned on by his peers and his superiors,like rough and bawdy fairs, alehouses and in the arms, the eyes, the lips of bonnie Scotland's womankind:but look, he only reached out therebelieving true he was in love, (as well as by her truly loved), and with her all the pleasures proved, compared his heart with that undying rose; that red, red rosethat's newly sprung in June, thatmelody that's never out of tune
Ploughman poet Robert Burns, like some volcanic rock afire, that's hurled up high, so high above mere commonplace mundanityof heat suffice to set alight the sullen earth, the endless sky,oh yes, too bright for many folkof its own time to look at, see,shedding as it goes in some greatwild parabola, poetic sparks and soon this melting rock slowed, fell away and cooled, and,sighing, met with careless deathas all things must,so Rabbie all too soon expelled his final breath.
Burns is never lost to memory: this man of rock, this poet shall within my time abide with me;tell in ways and words ethereal that to live is more than just to be.
Bryan Islipfor the Wester-Ross Burns Club meeting20 December 2011
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