Burns’ Night 2009
i.m. Adrian Mitchell

Tonight the driven snow unearths the dead,
unmaps the land where Burns importuned fame
then rode in red to guarantee his bread -
much more than Truth, he hunted purse and name.

And Adrian, you’d recognise this man 
with mouths to feed and pain a gnawing threat –
who wouldn’t welcome such a pension plan?
As Rabbie says, a man’s a man... and all that.

So life makes fools of men yet pays them back:
the portrait, post, committee, royal gong –
but you could never tread that beaten track,
nor proffer right the path you deemed as wrong.

A child, you trek across this fresh snow-fall,
redeeming ways we thought impassable.