Shorter Poems

(from The Anti-Polaris Guitar)

AULD FOLKS, YOUNG FOLKS

Auld Folks, young folks, sing along wi me,                                        19.5.61

Mussolini dangled fae a lamp-post, no a tree;

byde a wee, ma bonnie lass, I’ll tell ye verie soon,

ay, I’ll tell ye whye the Yankees brocht Polaris tae Dunoon. 

           Some wuid sell the hippens aff the hurdies o a waen,

           Millport has a wheen o folk lik thaem, I’ll say again;

           they tried tae let the Yankees hae the golfin aa the day

           for radioactive dollars - it was daylicht robberie.

Auld folks, young folks, here’s anither sang,

Castro was a Cuban man, an Kennedy was wrang;

wait until I tell ye and I’ll tell ye verie soon,

ay, I’ll tell ye whye the Yankees brocht Polaris tae Dunoon.

           Some wuid cheat thur grannies for a daud o chowein gum

            some wuid sell ye ice-cream whyle they stuff ye up the lum,

           lik the fascist an the nazi in the days o Adolf Hit,

           an the mess they mak is messier for thur waant o sense an wit.

Auld folks, young folks, listen, girls an boys,

ye tell them by thur silence an ye tell them by thur noise;

haud yer wheesht or gie it purr, I’ll tell ye verie soon,

ay, I’ll tell ye whye the Yankees brocht Polaris tae Dunoon.

           It 's freedom that we sing aboot, it’s freedom, weel ye ken,

           they’d lyke tae sell ye neck an crop, wee chookie-burdie hen;

           Thur luve o Gode the Faither is a lot o luve, ye know,

           but they’d atomise thur mithers for the luve o Yankee dough.

Auld folks, young folks, here’s a sang for you,

Eichmann was a nazi but he got the old one-two;

and if I haenae telt ye whye the Yanks are in Dunoon,

then stick aroon, ma laddie O, ye’ll hear it verie soon.

           Ye mynd the Nazis in the fiords o Norroway-ower-the-sea?

           The strenth-thru-joy battalion boys that murdert leebertie?

           If ye daenae ken bi this timm whye the Yanks are in Dunoon,

           then yer bum is oot the windae lyke a muckle big balloon.