DIO-CALM

by Robin Purves (1993)

The culmination of human a'ghearrach
In successive poems, realistic, idealistic, ys garthion,
The fullest organic y clefyd rhydd,
Sheer fecalïen!

The successive stages of the Scottish sterzo
Climbing out of the welter of confused inneir
Ended by embracing all eiscréid

So, we scale the summit and leap into the drabhag
People full of remoteness, uncertainty and crasse
Waiting with wide-open sticky leaves for our tiny-winged keech,
Always on the point of being suffocated by shite.

Shit with many a ròd nan cliar (anchorage of poets)
Shit (cheery) with birds
Shit thin and sharp and small
Shit (of wrinkled snout) like a badger
Shit like the two halves of a muffin
Shit every river in Scotland
Shit, cromadh, at all Scotland below us
Shit a glimpse of England down below
Shit nowhere more than in Scotland here
Shit Scotland! The Golden Eagle
Shit the elements of its complex history
Shit the New Scotland; fion gà leigeadh
Shit the rest of the universe dh'aon ghath
Shit the lines on the palm of my hand
Shit my own nature that for a while gave way

This is the cream of my country - bezinksel
Its customs, antiquities, aolach,
This is the full, the immarcescible fearadh
In the low country of salchar
As obdurate as Scheiße

This is the full, the immarcescible fearadh
In a bare world of shining quartz and purple shit

The soaring eagle, the unstalked shit
And the leaping mountain shit.

III

In Germany - his participation in that great utwerpselen
Is all patently y dolur rhydd
Starred here and there with Buinneach

Love of country, in me, is love of a new òtrach
Impregnably rooted in the most monstrous faeces.

Of the water crow-foot leafage, streaming shit
And of my glimpse of the first rock-pigeon I saw shit
So must Euripides have seen a sea-bird shit
And seen too mist condensing on an eagle shit

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