The Crow

The crow sat down and thought a bit

Who is to say what laws permit

I take a thing that draws my eye

My interest is my alibi

I travel through the wicked world

My Jolly Roger is unfurled

I have the knack of nicking stuff

It makes it mine oddly enough

The owners have no fixed ideas

Their compost piles my gallerias

They value things that I don’t want

I pick their trash like a savant

I drag bits out and hawk the wares

To former owners unawares

Who ooh and aah at my concision

They’re unaware of their misprision

The stuff you want is all around

I find it laying on the ground

But when you see me overhead

You wish you had my stuff instead

Holidays In Tartarus

He who, grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him; nor below
Can love or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent, sharp endurance: he can tell
Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell
Still unimpaired, though old, in the soul’s haunted cell.

Little Georgie Gordon