05-21-2015, 11:07 PM
On shelf of cedar stands a jug, cobalt blue with gold relief;
a tiny Toby without face, but of the style and with the grace.
Atop the glazed and glossy pot an elegant and perfect neck,
involutus at its rim, sealed in wax now black once red,
to keep the Angel’s vapours in.
For twenty years the QE2 sailed the world and steamed her way
far from the waters of her birth, into the port of old New York.
Then came the change to burning oil and gone forever smoke and steam.
In sixty-nine she lost the heart that pumped and pushed her scalding blood;
a diesel transplant indignae.
And what to mark the shameful shift away from all that made her grand?
Some trumpets raised and made their blast, some dignitaries took the stand,
a speech was made, a Queen looked on, a band squeaked up a hornpipe reel.
A Scottish soul was watching on, he saw the fall from greatness and
whilst canny thinking, drank a dram.
From Clydebank berth, her port of home, she sailed away two million miles
leaving the slips and chains behind; but to that Inverary mind
the memory was more than steel and more than rivets, plates and ribs.
A spirit in the wake of time was churned up by her massive screws;
to bottle that, became the aim.
On cedar shelf there stands a jug, dark as the blue of oceans deep,
enscribed upon it, QE2, in copper-script and glazed to last,
and if you shake it you will hear the spirit of a time long past.
Beinne Bhuide whisky, sealed with wax, kept for forty years intact,
and twelve before. It’s still not time.
Tectak
2015
a tiny Toby without face, but of the style and with the grace.
Atop the glazed and glossy pot an elegant and perfect neck,
involutus at its rim, sealed in wax now black once red,
to keep the Angel’s vapours in.
For twenty years the QE2 sailed the world and steamed her way
far from the waters of her birth, into the port of old New York.
Then came the change to burning oil and gone forever smoke and steam.
In sixty-nine she lost the heart that pumped and pushed her scalding blood;
a diesel transplant indignae.
And what to mark the shameful shift away from all that made her grand?
Some trumpets raised and made their blast, some dignitaries took the stand,
a speech was made, a Queen looked on, a band squeaked up a hornpipe reel.
A Scottish soul was watching on, he saw the fall from greatness and
whilst canny thinking, drank a dram.
From Clydebank berth, her port of home, she sailed away two million miles
leaving the slips and chains behind; but to that Inverary mind
the memory was more than steel and more than rivets, plates and ribs.
A spirit in the wake of time was churned up by her massive screws;
to bottle that, became the aim.
On cedar shelf there stands a jug, dark as the blue of oceans deep,
enscribed upon it, QE2, in copper-script and glazed to last,
and if you shake it you will hear the spirit of a time long past.
Beinne Bhuide whisky, sealed with wax, kept for forty years intact,
and twelve before. It’s still not time.
Tectak
2015
