[Here is a poem about a place I’ve been and seen and drunk in, along with some music to match]

Edinburgh

City of dreams and sloping pagan peaks in a city

Gigantic sea-shanty sized voices with looping arr sounds

Turbulent winter snow drifts

Warming whisky tumblers filled with smoky graceful ease

Like a cream coloured negligee it slides down the back of my throat

At the bottom of Calton Hill there’s moss growing in the shadows

At the bottom of the Cowgate there’s lust that grows there on a saturday night

At the top of the gables and medieval skyline grows general majesty

The ode to history can never be humble

Where in spring there’s purple thistle

Swaying so closely to Princes St

And the pruned neat and tidy street posies

Belie the hidden ghettos out on Westerhailes

Follow around the Water of Leith

Swimming down, around, swimming tadpole west

The canals of Edinburgh eventually slide towards West Lothian

And from thence out to the ocean.

Wide outwards towards possiblity

Filled with water fowl, the washing suds and sorry bones of the 19th Century.

Who keeps track of what goes in there.

Who knows what sinks below to the bottom of the silt

Stay in your tartan walled pub and watch as the world slides by.

Somewhat modern, somewhat ancient.

Always Edinburgh.

 

Note: I don’t hold the copyright to the exceptional ambient album The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski, but it seemed appropriate.