A red red rose

Happy birthday, Robert Burns, born 1759, and celebrated with haggis and whisky tonight (The William will be in the kitchen later; his haggis is The Best!)

But while I like the veggie haggis and the whisky, I'm not all that keen on the poetry...

Give me instead a contemporary poet, such as Robin Robertson, born in the best of years, 1955. Here, only two months early, is his 'Annunciation':

Annunciation

after Fra Angelico

He has come from the garden, leaving

no shadow, no footprint in the dew.

They hold each other's gaze at the point

of balance: everything streaming

towards this moment, streaming away.

A word will set the seed

of life and death,

the over-shadowing of this girl

by a feathered dark.

But not yet: not quite yet.

How will she remember the silence

of that endless moment?

Or the end, when it all began - 

the first of seven joys

before the seven sorrows?

She will remember the aftersong

because she is only human.

One day

she'll wake with wings, or wake

and find them gone.