A POEM about the irrational but powerful toils of unrequited passion.

The writer is George Campbell Hay (1915-1984), one of the most fascinating, though often overlooked, figures of the Scottish Renaissance. A poet in Gaelic and English as well as Scots, not to mention French and Norwegian, he was dogged by mental ill-health after war service. His Collected Poems and Songs were published in 2000 for the Lorimer Trust by Edinburgh University Press.

STILL GYTE, MAN?

'Still gyte, man? Stude I in yere claes

I'd thole nae beggar's nichts an' days,

chap-chappan, whidderan lik a moose,

at ae same cauld an' steekit hoose.'

'What stane has she tae draw yere een?

What gars ye, syne she aye has been

as toom an' hertless as a hoor,

gang sornan kindness at her dure?'

'Though ye should talk a hunner year,

the windblown wave will seek the shore,

the muirlan watter seek the sea.

Then, wheesht man. Sae it is wi me.'

gyte=crazy with longing or desire; whidderan=rushing about; steekit=shut-up; toom= empty; sornan=scrounging.