EDWIN MORGAN born 1920 died last week. He was the first Poet Laureate for Scotland,wrote wonderfully imaginative poems with the main these of communication.I knew about him because of the Loch Ness Monster's song. But his website (just google his name } has a wonderful selection of his work. In particular the poem he wrote about being eighty:
Being Eighty
Edward Morgan 1920-2010
Push the boat out compaleros
push the boat out whatever the sea
through the boiling reefs black as they are
the enemy of us all makes sure of it!
Mariners! keep good watch alight
for that last passage of blue water
we have heard of and long to see
no matter if we cannot, no matter
in our eighty year old timbers
leaking and patched as they are but sweet
well seasoned with the scent of boards
long perished. Servicable still
in unarrested pungency
like distant ships in mist, or bell
clanging ruthless from stormy buoys.
And Edwin Morgan's definition of Poetry? Partly an instrument of exploration.
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