“And the great castles shall be filled with dust,
The arms shall crumble, the dogs be unfed,
The pipers wander westward masterless.”
Edwin Morgan (1967)
#photography #ruin #castle #StAndrews #sunset #silhouette #poetry #EdwinMorgan #battlements #PotD #golden
“Blue with endlessly moving seas,
white with clouds endlessly moving,
and the continents creep on plates
endlessly moving soundlessly.”
Edwin Morgan (1979)
#photography #sea #sailboat #ketch #peace #blue #PotD #poetry #EdwinMorgan #reflection #calm #seascape #patterns #sailing
‘It will take a good strong rat
to snap, but there are good strong rats.’
— ‘Trap’ by #EdwinMorgan, first published in Grafts (1983) and published here in Dreams and Other Nightmares (Mariscat Press, 2010)
🐀
“white clouds and blue sky mount through us into
a strange protective canopy, and ground
of some sort rushes up to meet our feet
and scatters red and brown to far horizons
now the horizons of our sight. “
Edwin Morgan (1977)
#Photography #PotD #Scotland #Skye #poetry #EdwinMorgan #landscape
“The trees are closer, thicker.
I must make my way with no shelter but theirs.
This is an impossible forest, but I am in it.”
Edwin Morgan (1977)
#photography #DarkHedges #Ballymoney #CountyAntrim #Ireland #trees #beech #tangle #poetry #EdwinMorgan #PotD #forest #trunks #maze
“But who is the demolition man,
cutting a swath through broken landscapes,
bringing down the past and singing with it?
Who is the necessary destroyer?”
Edwin Morgan (1978)
#photography #cranes #skyline #jibs #poem #EdwinMorgan #PotD #industrial #city #cityscape #silhouette #construction
“The skyline is half bristling with cranes,
half slashed with ruins and gap-sites.
The rain browns the new concrete,
the young trees shiver, but make it.”
Edwin Morgan (1978)
#photograph #cranes #London #skyline #poem #EdwinMorgan #PotD #construction #silhouette #jib #industrial
“By water and wind,
By dusty sparrow,
By mossy wall,
By ricey shallow,
By the seed of the poor
And the fruit of the good
Be bound, be free!
Be bound! Be free!”
Edwin Morgan (1977)
#photography #wall #moss #lichen #wallfern #PotD #poetry #EdwinMorgan #Makar #MicroNature #TinyWorlds
The Flowers Of Scotland
“Yes, it is too cold in Scotland for flower people;
in any case who would be handed a thistle?”
Edwin Morgan (1969)
#photography #Scotland #PotD #poetry #EdwinMorgan #Makar #thistle #thristle #cluaran #guardian #noble #prickly #FlowerOfScotland #silhouette
Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!
#EdwinMorgan reading “Trio”, published in The Second Life (1968) and recorded by Ewan McVicar in 1990 at Tower Studio, Glasgow 🎄❄️
This particular poem is an alternative take on the well-known rhyme about the Glasgow Coat of Arms.
#glasgow #streetart #poetry #edwinmorgan #glasgowcoatofarms #streetpoetry
A poem by Edwin Morgan inscribed into a flagstone on Candleriggs in Glasgow, just outside the City Halls. Born in 1920, Morgan became the city's first poet laureate in 1999.
Cont./
#glasgow #streetart #poetry #edwinmorgan #glasgowcoatofarms #streetpoetry
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.
... 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 ...
— from ‘The Unspoken’ by #EdwinMorgan, published in The Second Life (EUP, 1968) 🌒
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 . . .
✨ “Leonids” by #EdwinMorgan, published in Cathures (Carcanet, 2002)
This is the first image of three in the post. Each image contains part of the poem. GALLOWGATE HALLOWEEN By Not Edwin Morgan Seven o'clock. The bus growls In the evening chill. I get off at Barrowland, Notepad in hand with a deadline to meet, And hope for public crisis or squalor. A greasy, one-legged creature trundles Past in a rusty wheelchair, garbed In soiled trackies and a Celtic top, But does nothing for me except Cadge a couple of quid, For Special Brew no doubt, Or A thighful of opium: Is an overdose in the street too much to ask? A nondescript old dear shuffles Along the frost-sparkled pavement, Face pinched with hunger, down To her last chuckies of coal (Do they still use coal? Check that later.), Unsteady in her Sue Ryder shoes, She does not, alas, collapse Or have the decency to fall through a window. Three urchins approach with holes for eyes, Each in a white sheet (I say white - they were filthy), The cheapest of guises, poor things,
Although gallusness is free in the Calton: “Ho, Mister! Going tae gie us a pound fur wur Halleen?” Halleen! Brilliant! I write that down. But I do so sadly, because these wretched phantoms Cannot imagine the real ghosts of the Dear Green Place - Shipyards, backcourts, Tongs, etcetera - And their snotter-encrusted coupons (Which obviously I can't see, but come on), Like the barnacled hull of the Waverley (It still sails from Glasgow - I looked it up) Reflect a demoralised Clyde, Drained of all hope. I wait for a bit to see if they get hit by a truck. No. Tyche does not smile on me. Then thankfully the mother scuttles out: Jesus, the state of her! A midden in human form, blue tattoos On the arm - Hugh, Davie, Tam - The children's names, I surmise (Or the fathers’, perhaps), Vodka on the breath, Ciggy hanging from the lip like The condemned men who once swung here, Or Kelvingrove's Christ of Saint John, She sings to me in the local patois: “Mr Morgan! Going tae no dae a poyum aboot me and my weans?” Excellent. Clearly uneducated. Not like me.
Professor and Poet. OBE FRSE. I assure her that I will do as she pleads, Safe in the knowledge that she’ll never read This. I give the children five pounds (They only wanted three, remember), For which they are told to be grateful And I get a taxi back to the West End. No-one died, unfortunately, Which would have been handy, but I'm consoled by what really matters in life: The simple delights of a good, honest, vibrant First draft.
Onywey but, here it is, “Gallowgate Halloween” by, as A juist telt ye, NOT Edwin Morgan…
#Scotstober #Halloween #Halleen #Poetry #EdwinMorgan
An A'm gey sarrae for the tottie text 🙂
“We have a building which is more than a building.
There is a commerce between inner and outer, between brightness and shadow,
between the world and those who think about the world.”
Edwin Morgan (2004)
#photography #Scotland #Parliament #architecture #poetry #EdwinMorgan #Holyrood #PofD #freedom
When you go, if you go, and I should want to die, there’s nothing I’d be saved by more than the time you fell asleep in my arms in a trust so gentle I let the darkening room drink up the evening, till rest, or the new rain lightly roused you awake. I asked if you heard the rain in your dream and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.
#Poetry
#Poem
#BlueskyPoetry
#EdwinMorgan
When You Go by Edwin Morgan
Second hand book sites discoveries !
Including Edwin Morgan on Edwin Muir in The Review, February 1963
@edmorgantrust.bsky.social
#edwinmuir
#edwinmorgan
#scottishliterature
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.
The summer grows late, cool, ragged, precious.
Clouds like ungainly brooms are sweeping showers across the slates ...
— ‘A Crow’ by #EdwinMorgan, published in Sweeping Out the Dark (Carcanet, 1994)
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.
Keep at them, ladies. This is a feast.
This is a midsummer night’s dream...
— ‘Midge’ by #EdwinMorgan, published here in Edwin Morgan Twenties: Menagerie (Polygon, 2020) ☀️🪰
A #National5 Practice Paper for #EdwinMorgan? Right here. buff.ly/clnYCT8 #ScottishSetTexts
#SetTexts2025
#EnglishTeachersScotland
#ScotEdEnglish
#National5English
#SQAEnglish
#SQAReady
#ScottishLiterature
#StudyingScottishTexts
“Let's leave the window, and write. No need to wait for a fine blue to break through. We must live, make do.”
Poems: www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edwinm...
✒️ #EdwinMorgan, Scottish poet and translator, was #BOTD 27 April 1920. #Poetry #Literature
PARTICLE POEMS: 3
By #EdwinMorgan
Three particles lived in mystical union.
They made knife, fork, and spoon,
and earth, sea, and sky.
They made animal, vegetable, and mineral,
and faith, hope, and charity.
They made stop, caution, go,
and hickory, dickory, dock.
Christ of St John of the Cross Salvador Dalí It is not of this world, and yet it is, And that is how it should be. Strong light hits back and the arms Coming from where we cannot see, Ought not to see, another dimension For another time. At this time, we Share the life of bay and boat With simply painted fishermen Who give no Amen Even if clouds both apocalyptic and real Made them look up and feel What they had to feel Of shattering amazement, fear, Protection, and a wash of glory. Was it an end coming near? Was it a beginning coming near? What happened to the thorns and blood and sweat? What happened to the hands like claws the whipcord muscles? Has the artist never seen Grünewald? ‘I have to tell you John of the cross called, Said to remind you light and death once met.’
Happy #WorldArtDay!
In 2005, Salvador Dalí’s ‘Christ of St John of the Cross’ was voted Scotland’s favourite painting held in a Scottish public collection.
— ‘Christ of St John of the Cross’ by #EdwinMorgan, publ. in Beyond the Sun: Scotland’s Favourite Paintings (Luath Press, 2007).
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.
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.
— ‘From a City Balcony’ by #EdwinMorgan, published in Centenary Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2020) ☀️
Portrait photo of Edwin Morgan in profile with stylish, upturned collar, black jacket, white hair and glasses. Text in pink reads '"Your favourite sound-bite, gay perversion, Is not in my New Authorized Version." Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) #WorldPoetryDay.'
It's #WorldPoetryDay. Here's a classic line from "Section 28" by former Scots Makar, humanist and LGBT+ rights advocate #EdwinMorgan (1920-2010). It was written in 2000, when the campaign to keep section 28 in place, preventing the "promotion of homosexuality in schools", was raging in Scotland.
"When You Go", Edwin Morgan
Lennon Tool Bar Bubble Tea (a lil evaporated)
Leuchtturm
Kaweco Sport Macchiato <B>
Filtered morning light-overcast+under trees
Have a listen to Remote Part/Scottish Fiction by Idlewild to hear this to music.
#poetry #edwinmorgan #scottishliterature #fountainpensandink
Glasgow’s Mariscat Press commissioned Alasdair to design jackets of Morgan’s poetry collections Grafts/Takes and Sonnets from Scotland.
Design by Abby Carter
#lgbtplushistorymonth
#edwinmorgan
#edwinmorgantrust
#alasadairgray
#thealasadairgrayarchive
