The Edwin Morgan Trust

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Trust of the first Scottish poet laureate, Edwin Morgan.

Edwin @ 90 Morgan more can – can more? canmore ceann mór “great head” aye brims with poem – king bard
Kissing Edwin Morgan seems uncanny because he is gay and I am straight and because the day is especially cold. A hungry kisser, kissing him brings out the hive that is him. A hive, are you with me? Grey buildings. Check. Difficulties? Check. I’m wrong for him, loose boy. We are on a corner, of course we are, then in an alley smooching. He talks of the desert, distant rivers, Greekery, the absolutes I will always fail to claim. I smooth him. Rats run the terrace we are dallying on. He nods, says yes. To whatever. I hug him. Of course I do. Love limits us, over, over, specialising in this twisted limb of science. A bus passes and we both wave to the world, its merry passengers, its dour chance. I have a train or plane to catch, I pat his perfect shoulder, say farewell. And then it is the night, alone. Night, the second best escape; walk, walk in a heavy coat. Maybe the future needs you.
XII The sun is shining. Eddie must be writing. XIII It was night-time all day long. It was dreich And it was going to dreichen. Eddie made light With his pencil point.
For Edwin Morgan To swim out into the impassioned light and glint of the new, as it seeks language vulnerable, strange-spined, blink-eyed is for you mandatory. Let the blue sky bend over oddity or even the monstrous – The taste of poetry is for you, this, to substitute for the rose in abandoned windows the happy orphans.
But Glasgow days and grey weathers, when the rain beat on the bus shelter and you leaned slightly against me, and the back of your hand touched my hand in the shadows, and nothing was said, when your hair grazed mine accidentally as we talked in a cafe, yet not quite accidentally, when I stole a glance at your face as we stood in a doorway and found I was afraid of what might happen if I should never see it again, when we met, and met, in spite of such differences in our lives, and did the common things that in our feeling became extraordinary, so that our first kiss was like the winter morning moon, and as you shifted in my arms it was the sea changing the shingle that changes it as if for ever (but we are bound by nothing, but like smoke to mist or light in water we move, and mix) — O then it was a story as old as war or man, and although we have not said it we know it, and although we have not claimed it we do it, and although we have not vowed it we keep it, without a name to the end.
Look now, look quick – a shooting star! Make your wish! It’s very far From here to where the active light Set out and streaked across a night In Glasgow’s greatly dark November To die there, a supernal ember. What was your wish? You wanted more? It’s granted! Up there is a store Of light. It’s breaking now in showers Not of stars but meteors, Spark after spark, scattering, dying, You could send your wishes flying In thousands, born, reborn, delighting To be part of that bright sighting Which disappears and yet appears Again in our unlonely years.
Horsemen It was late, a wintry evening, and I was in the old flat looking out at everything familiar, all the details of every neighbouring house quite clear under streetlights when are the corner by the lamp I saw them – horses and their men talking together, their hoof clatter and whispering (the Horseman's word I'd read about but cannot speak), Their great flanks, fetlocks, ancient and out of place in Glasgow now, under the street lamp at my corner where they should not have been. And as I stared at them talking together all at once every light went out and I was left in darkness with that sound of hooves, beating, retreating –
But when at last you come across the ship with eighty sails, oh what a sight that is to take to heart, with the white canvas flapping and the rigging snapping as she churns the ocean through a stiff breeze, and the sailors since out their seemingly inexhaustible store of shanties, and the dolphins slice and gleam and are ahead of the prow like protective things from a world that is not quite ours, and the playful captain out of sheer joy blasts his horn eighty times into the misty morning, and then with his blue eyes glittering he bangs the rail – ‘Steady as she goes!’
Maker of boats, earthships, the white cradle with its patchwork quilt, toys of wood painted bright as the zebras’ muzic in your carousel, patiently cut space cleanly! There’s dark earth underneath, not far the North Sea, a beach goes out greyer than Dover’s for ignorant armies. Scotland is the little bonfires in cold mist, with stubbornness, the woman knits late by a window, a man repairing
My Mother She would hold the mug in both hands, one Sunday as evening approached she smiled in her own peaceful way and sat a moment in the half dark A small saucepan held the super she brought home from the fine folks’ house we went to bed, and I lay thinking how they had a whole pot to devour – This was my mother, tiny, early dead, a washerwoman’s lot is to die early, her legs shake from the loads she carries, her head throbs as she bends ironing – And her mountains are the dirty washing! She has a tranquilizing cloudscape of steam, and as for pastures new the washerwoman has the attic – She pauses with the iron: I see her. Her brittle body was broken by capital, grew thin, grew thinner – think about it, proletarians – She was bent, you know, bent from washing, I never knew how young she was, she wore a clean apron in her dreams, and the postman greeted her then –
John I Nothing will bring him back. I know that, of course I know that. The days When I do not think of him are few, but if I turn my gaze On a phantom, on a plot of earth, on a faded photograph of great times, I raise Nothing, nearly nothing, no, not nothing, it is the something of a pain that stays Ineradicable and only to be mitigated when I breathe the phrase I loved you. You must know It was truly so, although As clay in clay you cannot catch my thanks, my steadiness, my lateness, my praise.
A Crow The summer grows late, cool, ragged, precious. Clouds like ungainly brooms are sweeping showers across the slates. On a dripping lamp-standard a crow hunches, flaps, hunches. The young painter with his ring of white sings as he hops in and out of the rain. The sun bursts what it has been saving so suddenly, so brilliantly, we are smiling. It is August still. The leaves hang fast and glisten. If there were no seasons, who would be singing? If there was no weather, who would be painting? If there was no earth turning, we darkly, partly think, no crow would have a lawn to stamp on or Aristarchus any globe to dandle. As not to be born is worst – a crow will tell you, a worm will tell you – not to be created crosses galaxies like a shadow of horror. But created they are; born, I and the painter; really wet ruffled shiny black half-happy the feathers of the raucous-hearted clatterer.
Midge The evening is perfect, my sisters, The loch lies silent, the air is still, The sun’s last rays linger over the water and there is faint smirr, almost a smudge of summer rain. Sisters, I smell supper, and what is more perfect than supper? It is emerging from the wood, in twos and threes, a dozen in all, making such a chatter and a clatter as it reaches the rocky shore, admiring the arrangements of the light. See the innocents, my sisters, the clumsy ones, the laughing ones, the rolled-up sleeves and the flapping shorts, there is even a kilt (god of the midges, you are god to us!) So gather your forces, leave your tree-trunks, forsake the rushes to the sweet flesh of face and forearm. Think of your eggs. What does the egg need? Blood, and blood. Blood is what the egg needs. Our men have done their bit, they’ve gone, it was all they were good for, poor dears. Now it is up to us. The egg is quietly screaming for supper, blood, supper, blood, supper! Attack, my little Draculas, my Amazons! look at those flailing arms and stamping feet. They’re running, swatting, swearing, oh they’re hopeless. Keep at them, ladies. This is a feast. This is a midsummer night’s dream. Soon we shall all lie down filled and rich, and lay, and lay, and lay, and lay.
Kissing Edwin Morgan seems uncanny because he is gay and I am straight and because the day is especially cold. A hungry kisser, kissing him brings out the hive that is him. A hive, are you with me? Grey buildings. Check. Difficulties? Check. I’m wrong for him, loose boy. We are on a corner, of course we are, then in an alley smooching. He talks of the desert, distant rivers, Greekery, the absolutes I will always fail to claim. I smooth him. Rats run the terrace we are dallying on. He nods, says yes. To whatever. I hug him. Of course I do. Love limits us, over, over, specialising in this twisted limb of science. A bus passes and we both wave to the world, its merry passengers, its dour chance. I have a train or plane to catch, I pat his perfect shoulder, say farewell. And then it is the night, alone. Night, the second best escape; walk, walk in a heavy coat. Maybe the future needs you.
May Day (a wee sang for laddies and lassies) Leafikie leafikie green! We ken the winter’s awa. Lat’s gang whaur the swire’s as bricht’s a preen, me and you and us an aa. Luik at the spring, hingin her washin owre the schaw. We’se gang and rin, rinnin and singin, ying, singin, springin an aa. A lowe on the paper the-day! A lowe on the sheets by the waa! Lat’s carry a lowe mair rid nor thae – flaggies and banners and streamers an aa. Lauchin the spring skelps through the streets as bricht’s a baa. We’se gang richt furrit like sojers noo – you and me and us an aa.
How often when I think of you the day grows bright! Our silent love wanders in Glen Fruin with the butterflies and cuckoos – bring me the drowsy country thing! Let it drift above the traffic by the open window with a cloud of witnesses – a sparkling burn, white lambs, the blaze of gorse, the cuckoos calling madly, the real white clouds over us, white butterflies about your hand in the short hot grass, and then the witness was my hand closing on yours, again and again till you sighed and turned for love. Your breast and thighs were blazing like the gorse. I covered your great fire in silence there. We let the day grow old along the grass. It was in the silence the love was. Footsteps and witnesses! In this Glasgow balcony who pours such joy like mountain water? It brims, it spills over and over down to the parched earth and the relentless wheels. How often will I think of you, until our dying steps forget this light, forget that we ever knew the happy glen, or that I ever said, We must jump into the sun, and we jumped into the sun.
Why is poetry important to me? It is a very ancient art which has gone through many metamorphoses but survives because of its power to move people's emotions in unexpected ways. A good poem delivers first surprise – 'I've never seen those words brought together like that before' – and then assent, which may give joy or sadness but above all a sense of satisfaction and finality – no other way of putting it would do. And the poem has a strange means of retaining its power, despite the loss of surprise, so that even if you revisit it years later it can still catch your heart. Is it good for you? Is it good for society? Without offering proof, I'd give a yes to both questions.
Wolf Days The wolf looked down and sniffed the air from Blythswood Hill. Evening plovers, even plump ones, nah, not worth his skill. Saw a dainty throat a roe deer ready for the threat and trot and thrill Of wolf-blood kill – blood and bits to slug your fill, Hot blood to bristle through the mist and chill. Where’s your coat of arms Have you any magic charms To keep the grey ones and the green woods wild and throbbing still?
Inevitably so, when it was all criminal activity, you were leading a double life, you couldn’t not lead a double life. If you had a good job or a responsible job as I had you simply had to be careful not to overstep the mark and reveal too much of what you were doing, yet on the other hand you felt it would have been wrong to be totally inhibited and wrong not to express your sexual feelings. So it was a very difficult time. It was something you didn’t speak about. One of my poems is called ‘The Unspoken’. It was partly a matter of the law. The law was changed in England in 1967. It wasn’t changed in Scotland until 1980. We were still in a kind of inhibited state all through that time.” — Edwin Morgan
Black and white photograph of John Scott sitting on a wall in a suit and smiling at the camera.
Section 28 God said to Winning: 'You are not. Winning, I mean. You and your lot Are rowing backward this time round. You are unsound, my mannie, unsound. Your favourite sound-bite, gay perversion, Is not in my New Authorised Version. I think you ought to buy a copy: Squeeze it out of Souter's poppy. I may not keep a place for you To sup your heavenly honeydew. What can you learn from my abjuring? The last seat went to Alan Turing.'
Absence My shadow – I woke to a wind swirling the curtains light and dark and the birds twittering on the roofs, I lay cold in the early light in my room high over London. What fear was it that made the wind sound like a fire so that I got up and looked out half-asleep at the calm rows of street-lights fading far below? Without fire Only the wind blew. But in the dream I woke from, you came running through the traffic, tugging me, clinging to my elbow, your eyes spoke what I could not grasp -- Nothing, if you were here! The wind of the early quiet merges slowly now with a thousand rolling wheels. The lights are out, the air is loud. It is an ordinary January day. My shadow, do you hear the streets? Are you at my heels? Are you here? And I throw back the sheets.
Wolf Bring back the wolf! He's not long gone, you know. He went out when sheep came in. Sheep clear men and women. Now let wolves clear sheep. A little wildness please, a little howling to be heard from the chalets, a circling of yellow eyes at Aviemore. That legend much discredited, of the following of the sledges, let us test it in the Cairngorms, in the winter playgrounds with their merry cries, in the white paths through the forest. It would be good to not get a few scalps to crawl with fear when they hear that eerie arctic song as one by one the muzzles lift and open in the dark, and the dark is long.