There Is Nae ‘Thaim an Us’ ava; It’s ‘Us’.
There is nae ‘thaim an us’ ava; it’s ‘us’,
Thae fowk ahint the wire in Calais’s camps,
Puir Syrian weans wha stegg the road in ranks,
Aa joukin drones oor siller gaed tae coff.
Whiles aa we hear’s the jingoistic guff,
That’s bred upo the playin fields o Eton,
Ilk nicht we’re deaved wi their barbarian bleatin;
Ach, Tweedledum an Tweedledee, enough!
Wha ettles tae breathe free, jist cam tae us,
Anither cog o brose is aa it taks,
Tae lowse the yoke ae tyrants frae yer backs;
There is nae ‘thaim an us’ ava; it’s ‘us’.
Sae steer the muckle pot, fling in a knurl;
Fir tartan kythes the colours o the warld.
Rab Wilson is a poet wha screives maistly in Scots. In 2004 he published his Omar Khayyam in Scots. His collection, Accent O The Mind wis publisht tae critical acclaim bi Luath Press o Embra in 2006. In November, 2007 he took up post as Robert Burns Writing Fellow in Reading Scots for Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association. He hus twice bin winner o The McCash Poetry Prize. In 2009 he published a saicent collection, Life Sentence, and an anthology o poetry bi contemporary Dumfries and Galloway poets, exclusively in the Scots leid, entitled Chuckies fir the Cairn. In 2010 he produced a poetry led film documentary anent coal mining in the South West Scotland, caa’d Finding the Seam. In 2011 he launcht his new collection A Map for the Blind (Luath 2011). He premiered a sonnet redouble/jazz music suite collaboratioun 1957 Flying Scot at Wigtown Leeterary Festival in 2013. In 2016 he published the collection Zero Hours on Luath Press. As of 2017 Rab wis made Convenor o the Scots Language Centre an is currently Scots Scriever in Residence at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. Rab is a leal-heirtit advocate fir aathing Scots, ettlin tae further Scots language, an gie her a heize up oan the global leeterary stage!