A light note to end the week’s choices, marking the twentieth birthday of the Poem of the Day. Scots have a talent for rather fierce and deflating humour, as these two little pieces show. The first is by Fraserburgh-born George Bruce, whose austere, thoughtful, verse occasionally erupts into comedy. The second is by Douglas Young, classics scholar, academic, and early Scottish nationalist.

VIBRATIONS

‘Be nocht hoity-toity’

You’ll mind on the gran tenor

wha’s tap note brak the gless

on the table-tap intae twa thoosand pieces.

You’ll mind on ‘the classic case’

o the wa’s o Jericho.

And then there wis the hen

that look’t Mrs McPhee

straught in the ee,

an she split.

Noo abody has their vibrations,

witin in the back-shop

or unner the bed

or spewed oot sudden

frae a shiny computer.

So, watch yer step this fine mornin,

my mannie.

LAST LAUCH

The Minister said it wald dee,

the cypress buss I plantit.

But the buss grew til a tree

naething dauntit.

It’s growan stark and heich,

derk and straucht and sinister,

kirkyairdie-like and deich.

But whaur’s the Minister?