Three clocks clang early summer time
Across the town cold as a Shacklock range,
Or like a body laid in quicklime
That bursts and rots and suffers carnal change.
Here I got drunk for many days together,
Had big ideas, fell in love. I meet
No ghost in the Octagon in cloudy weather,
No girl with plaits in Castle Street,
But Robert Burns with pigeons on his shoulder,
Dry as a limpet, climbs the flat pub wall,
And like glum Sisyphus rolling his boulder
The old museum bummer sighs
For bouncing boys with football-blackened knees
Who do not care for him at all.
On bicycles they drink the sweet, brisk air
Of bagpipe clouds that rise beyond St Clair.
From Collected Poems.