Galloway-based Stella Cruikshank offers what may be construed as a gentle parable about the Edinburgh Book Festival and its assorted word-smiths; while, below, Angus Calder has some amusing wordplay of his own.

         THE BOOK FESTIVAL

"What is it you're doing?"

I enquired of the old man brushing the path.

"I'm sweeping up all the words they left behind.

So many words.

Each year it's  the same.

I find them piled in corners;

In the flower beds;

And the wind catches them:

They get blown up

And tossed about:

Ideas get caught in the branches."

"But why so many left behind?"

"O people just throw them about;

So careless."

He fills the sack in his barrow.

“But what is this?

Why is this path clear?

No waste here -

Not a spare word."

"This is where the poets met,"

He replied.

           GREETING, NOT GREETING

                    For Peta Sandars

To wake to the reassurance of grey stone streets

under a clouded, adequate Edinburgh sky,

finding one has the right change in one’s pocket

for once: and for once there seems no cause to cry . . .

It is unnecessary to fly on a rocket.

Here is a day which one greets, not greeting.