Edwin Morgan > Quotes

“When you go,
if you go,
And I should want to die,
there's nothing I'd be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms
in a trust so gentle
I let the darkening room
drink up the evening, till
rest, or the new rain
lightly roused you awake.
I asked if you heard the rain in your dream
and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.”
― Edwin Morgan, New Selected Poems

“Valentine Weather

Kiss me with rain on your eyelashes,
come on, let us sway together,
under the trees, and to hell with thunder.”
― Edwin Morgan, A Book of Lives

“There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you

sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates.”
― Edwin Morgan, The Second Life: Selected Poems

“jollymerry
hollyberry
jollyberry
merryholly
happyjolly
jollyjelly
jellybelly
bellymerry
hollyheppy
jollyMolly
marryJerry
merryHarry
happyBarry
heppyJarry
bobbyheppy
berryjorry
jorryjolly
moppyjelly
Mollymerry
Jerryjolly
bellyboppy
jorryhoppy
hollymoppy
Barrymerry
Jarryhappy
happyboppy
boppyjolly
jollymerry
merrymerry
merrymerry
merryChris
ammerryasa
Chrismerry
asMERRYCHR
YSANTHEMUM”
― Edwin Morgan, The Second Life: Selected Poems

“Let's leave the window, and write. No need to wait for a fine blue to break through. We must live, make do.”
― Edwin Morgan, Cathures: New Poems, 1997 - 2001

“KING BILLY

Go from the grave. The shrill flutes
are silent, the march dispersed.
Deplore what is to be deplored,
then find out the rest.”
― Edwin Morgan, The Second Life: Selected Poems

“I learned both love and joy in a hard school/ and treasure them like the fierce salvage of/ some wreck that has been built to look like stone/ and stand, though it did not, a thousand years.”
― Edwin Morgan, Centenary Selected Poems

“I learned both love and joy in a hard school/ and treasure them like the fierce salvage of/ some wreck that has been built to look like stone/ and stand, though it did not, a thousand years,”
― Edwin Morgan, Centenary Selected Poems

“Yes, I go along with the idea of a Scottish Spring. It was genuinely a time of beginnings, a time of openings, and I always felt that those who left Scotland then - eg. Kenneth White, Douglas Dunn - were too impatient and should have stayed. New international configurations - Sottish-American, Scottish-Russian, Scottish-Brazilian - appeared. New genres like concrete poetry and sound-poetry challenged a fair amount of opposition. I remember Hugh MacDiarmid growling in 1970 "I'd hate an Ian Finlay poem on my gravetstone." Publishers like Wild Hawthorn, Migrant, Eugen Gomringer, Hansjörg Mayer, encouraged Scotland to see the world and the world to see Scotland.”
― Edwin Morgan, Justified Sinners: An Archaeology of Scottish Counter Culture, 1960 - 2000

“Plenty of trite and doctrinaire verse, and plenty of bombastic and rhetorical verse, has come out of the communist world, but those who rest happily when they reach this point of discovery are deceiving themselves, since some of the finest poetry of the century – in Blok, Mayakovsky, Brecht, and Neruda, to mention only these – has also come from that world, and it is high time that people in the West began to examine this poetry and its implications for our society.”
― Edwin Morgan, Sovpoems: Brecht, Neruda, Pasternak, Tsvetayeva, Mayakowsky, Martynov, Yevtushenko

“Love is the most mysterious of the winds that blow”
― Edwin Morgan, The Edwin Morgan Twenties: Scotland