SHETLAND-BORN William J (Bill) Tait (1918-1992) had a playful wit, and a more introspective side, as witnessed here in these two samples of his writing. His Collected Poems: A Day between Weathers appeared in 1980 (Paul Harris Publishing). His poems also feature in The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (EUP, 2005).
ON WITH THE DANCE! LET FREUD BE UNCONFINED!
No more we search our heart of hearts
Or rack our brains, by fits and starts,
To find why we did this or that,
Conscience and conscious both left flat.
Instead, to get the right result,
We’ve all been taught we must consult
Those not so deeply hidden springs,
The nasty mess that pulls the strings
And knows the answer every time,
Subliminal if not sublime.
But, if all-knowing, won’t it know
That we’ve got wise to it, and so,
Confound us with a double bluff
Which, after all, is simple stuff
Beside the lightning calculations
And complex ratiocinations
With which we freely credit it?
And, if we grant it so much wit
And so discount it, might it not,
Again omniscient, slyly spot
Our new access of acumen,
And start the whole damned thing again?
THE CONTRACTING UNIVERSE
Mount Palomar’s parabola,
Swinging its pole-wide span,
Finds in a reddening spectral light,
Launched before time began
Across five thousand million years,
The proper scale for man.
But I have held the farthest star
Within my elbow’s crook;
And bathed in pure galactic seas
Without let or rebuke;
And seen the last sun gutter out
In one tormented look.
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