Auld Man

Auld Man,

I trouble you with remembrance,

now you’re sixty years dead.

Green shillings on eyes have been

robbed by otherworld rogues

from where we come from.

Your son, my father, when

he was dying, quite calmly

conducted me to the lair

where he thought you lay,

regimented in your generation.

Laid flat there you laughed

(flat capped and no bloody frills),

when him and his brother

forgot which row had the honour

of receiving your remains.

Jack and Rab, I wonder

they didn’t knock each other

out with spent bouquets,

as the Tay wreathed below

in the bay where the saints

rowed in to Dargie

and the devil was swayed.

Auld Man, long gone,

your hammered boots 

(I hear their tread)

and looks that I inherit

to stare at the bairns

and scare their blood,

who have no notion

of the sweat

that brought their being here.