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.