Recently I was given a book by a comrade/friend, thanks Tommy. It was called, Coogit Bairns, for the ill-informed, it translates as "Cowgate Children", Cowgate being a district in Edinburgh. It was a book of poems and prose by a Scottish poet Sandie Craigie, 1963-2005, a wonderful performance poet, that I seemed to have missed, one of the problems of being a loner most of my life. Her subject matter is too varied to pick a typical example, but I thought this one was quite relevant to today.
The book is published by Red Squirrel Press and printed by Clydeside Press.
Not 1984.
George Orwell was a clever man
we say
forgettin that the flaw in the human race
is that we tend to repeat ourselves
until we learn
Even if the words in the history books
make it sound like it wiz different
in 1916, 53, 1956, 1959, 61, 1964, 65, 70, 72, 1973, 1979 and 1980
1989, 1991, 1997, up ti and including the present day,
am ah borin ye yet?
in Ireland, Iran, Hungary, Haiti, Zaire, Brazil, Indonesia,
Cambodia, Chile
Afghanistan, El Salvador, Panama, an the Gulf
In Nagasaki, the Basque, Sudan, Rwanda, Armenia
Australia, Noreiga and the Kurdish nation
just remember that history is written
by cunts too thick ti learn
just as George Bush makes predictions
in words we ken dinny come fi him
Orwell's message wiz clear
history dizny repeat itself
it's the cunts in power
and this isny 1984
it's groundhog day
in Brilliant Technicolour
again and again and again
