Auchencairn, and Scotland, as it Should Be

Dick Hattaraik and Billy Marshall

are drinking at the bar.

It's blue and carved from a boat

and they are sharing some porky scratchings

smuggled over last night from Holland.

On the bay, the Black Pearl, no Prince,

rocks at anchor, carronades trained

steadily up the Dumfries road. 

Outside, in a blaze of grass and yellow vetch,

some of Billy's eighty six children

play with an exciseman's hat,

while the exciseman himself

sits blushing, winding yarn for the daughter

whose beauty like Helen of Troy's

is renowned from coast to coast.

It is June, the start of a brilliant summer,

they are breathing the air of Galloway

and it is rich in love and brandy and revolution.

Boundaries shimmer, shift like haze.

It's mathematically possible, in fact, 

for Burns to come in

and put the icing on the cake.

Should I speak? 

Tell my tales of a bit of baccy 

smuggled in euro lorries, 

the angry letters I've written to the Standard,

my hidden fear that in an independent Scotland

my pension might suffer?

Maybe not.