Five Poems

THE FIFTH OF MAY

This morning shaving my brain to face the world
I thought of Love and Life and Death and wee
Meg Macintosh who sat in front of me
In school in Greenock blushing at her desk.
I find under the left nostril difficult,
Those partisans of stiff hairs holding out
In their tender glen beneath the rampart of
The nose and my father's long upperlip.

THE MUSICAL FARMER

   Look at the rain deciding
   To swivel over the land.

   What nearly a river the lane
   Has turned into. Remember
   Music and Quartet, the old
   Dears of the herd. Look at
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