The ‘Honours of Scotland’
School Trip February 2007
Lions, sejant affronte,
tressure flory, counter flory,
swans wings and unicorns chained
on tapestry fresh as grass.
Pennants swing, the breeze of battle
pumped from some hidden place
where dark kings wander
from reality to myth and back
to the rasp of sackbuts.
Stand on the right spot, break a robot eye,
and see Bruce crowned by Britney Spears
as the Countess of Fife,
or James IV the glamrock dwarf,
staggering beneath a lifetime’s guilt,
or Mary, Bairn of Broons,
screaming for a dummy, or a husband,
or at least a change of CD.
Then the tin-plate, the filigree,
the stone poked in a corner,
no talk, or touch, or photographs.
More than the three quid poorer,
with the shop’s Braveheart pencils
still to come, the real honours
of Scotland pour downstairs,
career across the black hem of rock,
their country paralysed below,
the past, their future, no
live connection yet.
School Trip February 2007
Lions, sejant affronte,
tressure flory, counter flory,
swans wings and unicorns chained
on tapestry fresh as grass.
Pennants swing, the breeze of battle
pumped from some hidden place
where dark kings wander
from reality to myth and back
to the rasp of sackbuts.
Stand on the right spot, break a robot eye,
and see Bruce crowned by Britney Spears
as the Countess of Fife,
or James IV the glamrock dwarf,
staggering beneath a lifetime’s guilt,
or Mary, Bairn of Broons,
screaming for a dummy, or a husband,
or at least a change of CD.
Then the tin-plate, the filigree,
the stone poked in a corner,
no talk, or touch, or photographs.
More than the three quid poorer,
with the shop’s Braveheart pencils
still to come, the real honours
of Scotland pour downstairs,
career across the black hem of rock,
their country paralysed below,
the past, their future, no
live connection yet.
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