There once lived a salamander
in a crazed institution who
seemed to be too old to rock 'n' roll
but too young to die.

As a strip cartoon I am, I played
the Quizz kid and asked him
about his big dipper stuff.

And from a deadbeat to an old
greaser, he answered: I'm the
pied piper, do ya' wanna small cigar?

From his bad-eyes and lovless presence
I runned for a taxi grab, raised the
chequerd flag and thought: dead or alive.


***


By the fire at midnight
we sit and sing songs from the wood,
such as "Ring Out, Solitice Bells" and
"Beltane."
My friend Jack, Jack-in-the-green
whom I use to call The Whistler.
When we're not singing under the
velvet green we use to hunting girls.
No wonder at the cup of wonder
we are Pibroch, cup in hand.


***


I'm gonna sing no lullaby
to you now, this is some
heavy horses I'm gonna tell you.

Living in these hard times
nowadays as one brown mouse,
and the mouse police never sleeps,
you got to be a journeyman
or a rover.

If you gonna be a weathercock
with moths buzzin' round your
pretty face in your acres wild.
Then you're not gonna stay long
in Broadford Bazaar.


***


Out on Dun Ringill near Kelpie
were they refines the North Sea oil,
I felt a stitch in time in my
warm sporran, so to say.

Something's on the move
for an old ghost in King
Henry's Madrigal, far from
home by the crossroad.

It's certainly feels like dark ages.
I rather jump up in my
flying dutchman and be heading
for Orion now, humming on an elegy.