Comin thro' the Rye

(In Memory of Jane Davison) 1. Pleas

Please help us keep your memory alive.

The unclean spirits cry out in the body
Or mind of the guest Ellen in a loud voice
Torment me not, and in the fury of her unclean
Hands beating the air in some kind of unending torment—
Nobody witnessing could possibly know the event
That cast upon her the spell of this enchantment.

Almost all the guests are under some kind of enchantment:
Of being poor day after day in the same body;

Feeling her head pick up her body,
question mark,
blurred misstamped question mark
snakes out of   bed,
trying to  jiggle unhappiness
as little as possible,
not to wake pain,
not to raise a shade,

And ye shall walk in silk attire,
And siller hae to spare,
Gin ye’ll consent to be his bride,
Nor think o’ Donald mair.
O wha wad buy a silken goun
Wi’ a poor broken heart!
Or what’s to me a siller croun,
Gin frae my love I part!

Aulder than mammoth or than mastodon
Deep i’ the herts o’ a’ men lurk scaut-heid
Skrymmorie monsters few daur look upon.
Brides sometimes catch their wild een, scansin’ reid,
Beekin’ abune the herts they thocht to lo’e
And horror-stricken ken that i’ themselves
A like beast stan’s, and lookin’ love thro’ and thro’
Meets the reid een wi’ een like seevun hells.

One, who is not, we see: but one, whom we see not, is:
Surely this is not that: but that is assuredly this.

What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under:
If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.

Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt:
We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?

Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover:
Neither are straight lines curves: yet over is under and over.

Two and two may be four: but four and four are not eight:
Fate and God may be twain: but God is the same thing as fate.

Last May a braw wooer cam down the lang glen,
And sair wi' his love he did deave me;
I said there was naething I hated like men:
The deuce gae wi 'm to believe me, believe me,
The deuce gae wi 'm to believe me.

He spak o' the darts in my bonie black een,
And vow'd for my love he was diein;
I said he might die when he liked for Jean:
The Lord forgie me for liein, for liein,
The Lord forgie me for liein!

A weel-stocked mailen, himsel for the laird,
And marriage aff-hand, were his proffers:
I never loot on that I ken'd it, or car'd,

On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785. Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.