On our side of the glass you laid out the Blackbird's sleepy eyes, its twiggy toes, crisp tail-feathers and its wings wider than the light from two windows.

The old grey goose

Go and tell ...
Go and tell ...
Go and tell ...
The old grey goose is dead.

The one that she'd been saving
For to make her feather-bed.

She died last Friday
With a pain in her head.

Old grander is weeping
Because his wife is dead.

The gosling's are mourning
Because their mother's dead.

Skeins o geese write a word
Across the sky. 
A word stuck lik a gong
Afore I wis born.
The sky moves like cattle,
Lowin.

I'm as empty as stane, as fields
Ploo'd but not sown, naked
And blin as a stane.
Blin tae the word, blin tae a'
Soon but geese ca'ing.

Whit dae birds write on the dusk ?
A word niver spoken or read.
The skeins turn hame,
On the wind's dumb moan,
A soun, maybe human bereft.