Rab Wilson is a Scottish poet who writes mainly in the Scots language. His works include a Scots translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. His latest collection is Zero Hours.
Scroll back from the cosmos,
To inner space.
The mind's micro-structure
Nanoscientists mind-mapping
The brain's hundred billion neurons,
Its thousand trillion connections,
Processing 0.1 quadrillion thoughts per second.
Vastly more sophisticated
Than any computer.
What causes that leap
Across the synapse?
The spark between Creator and Man?
That lets the poet contemplate the rose –
And move the human heart.
On Tuesday 15th December, 2015 Christie’s Auction House held a sale of property that had belonged to the late British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The sale realised more than £4.5 million pounds. The Guardian dryly stated that ‘she was worth more dead than alive’. Thatcher presided over one of the most bitter industrial disputes of the 20th century; the 1984-85 Miner’s Strike. Two days after this sale the last deep coal mine in Britain, Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire, closed.
The Kaiser Biscuit American Bald Eagle
Realised almost half a million dollars;
More absurd and obscene lots soon followed;
A set of ten gilt miniature oil barrels...
Mencken’s Dictionary of Quotations,
Hammered down for only fourteen grand;
An Emes and Barnard George IV inkstand;
Cinderella flounce and ostentation.
But now the room’s abuzz, they look askance,
Blood drips from each hedgefund manager’s maw,
As ravenously they surge and push and paw,
For surely now, the pièce de résistance;
Kellingley Colliery and its miners renowned,
Who’ll start the bidding! Surely, come, a pound...?
