Post by westender on Oct 8, 2010 14:16:03 GMT -1
Plans are afoot to somehow or other commemorate wir late Makar, Edwin Morgan. There's talk of a statue going somewhere on Byres Road. (arf) He was a true westender and once was a dominie at the yooni.
I don't think he'd have liked a statue (same as I don't think wir late First Meenister Donald Dewar would have liked a statue either - and certainly not where he's been plonked).
How, then, to commemorate the poet, in his proper place?
"What is that place, my father and my mother,
you have gone to, I think of, in the ashes
of the air and not the earth, better to go there
than under stones or in any remembrance
but mine and that of others who once loved you,
fewer year on year. It is midsummer
and till my voice broke, Summer suns are glowing
I loved to sing and One fine day to hear from
some thin wild old gramophone that carried
its passion across the Rutherglen street, invisibly
played again and again - I thought of that person,
him or her, as taking me to a country
far high sunny where I knew to be happy
was only a moment, a puttering flame in the fireplace
but burning all the misery to cinders
if it could, a sift of dross like what we mourn for
as caskets sink with horrifying blandness
into a roar, into smoke, into light, into almost nothing.
The not quite nothing I praise it and I write it."
I really like the Makars Court thing they have in Edinburgh. I reckon Edwin should have his words inscribed into the stones of the byways of the west end... doon Byres Road, along Uni Avenue, roond Professors Square, round the west quad, on the steps of the mens union ;D ... and maybe along Havelock Street, where special stones could be made to pick up the amazing sunset skies, punctuated by the steeple...
hmm, where's ma camera
I don't think he'd have liked a statue (same as I don't think wir late First Meenister Donald Dewar would have liked a statue either - and certainly not where he's been plonked).
How, then, to commemorate the poet, in his proper place?
"What is that place, my father and my mother,
you have gone to, I think of, in the ashes
of the air and not the earth, better to go there
than under stones or in any remembrance
but mine and that of others who once loved you,
fewer year on year. It is midsummer
and till my voice broke, Summer suns are glowing
I loved to sing and One fine day to hear from
some thin wild old gramophone that carried
its passion across the Rutherglen street, invisibly
played again and again - I thought of that person,
him or her, as taking me to a country
far high sunny where I knew to be happy
was only a moment, a puttering flame in the fireplace
but burning all the misery to cinders
if it could, a sift of dross like what we mourn for
as caskets sink with horrifying blandness
into a roar, into smoke, into light, into almost nothing.
The not quite nothing I praise it and I write it."
I really like the Makars Court thing they have in Edinburgh. I reckon Edwin should have his words inscribed into the stones of the byways of the west end... doon Byres Road, along Uni Avenue, roond Professors Square, round the west quad, on the steps of the mens union ;D ... and maybe along Havelock Street, where special stones could be made to pick up the amazing sunset skies, punctuated by the steeple...
hmm, where's ma camera