Verse 2: At a poetry reading
Tonight’s star reads with great sonority
poems of country, beasts, trees, birds,
with great if pained superiority
over those who use not words
but guns on feral, sick or wounded
animals, whose lands are bounded,
cut by fences which (truth!) he
declares offensive. Glory be!
His passion shames my mammal-eating,
planet-warming life. It shakes
my donsie tricks, my black mistakes,
my use of coal-fired power for heating.
And yet I wish that he could tell
that other humans are not hell.
There’s a line in there that’s stolen from the great Robert Burns. You can read the poem it’s from here.
Not ‘stolen’ but ‘repurposed’ from Rabbie, Jonathan.
Of course, Richard. I haven’t quite mastered the plagiarism business
What a great word is donsie. It should be widely known and used.
True Kathy. Also glaikit, niffer, aiblins and kennin
Maybe it’s homage rather than theft. Thanks to your helpful link I see that your poet is making another point i.e. that it was ever thus and the Righteous will always be around
Homage, yes thanks you Lisa, much less jailable. I confess I hadn’t read the Burns poem closely until writing this little verse of mine sent me in search of it. I love:
Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human.
I’ve never understood it as accepting the persistence of the unco guid, but just as giving them a serve.
LOL I like what is called ‘robust reviewing’, I do it myself.