TO ROBERT BURNS

They wrote you greetings

after you were safely dead,

growing more remote in time,

those who never would

have deigned to treat you

as an equal, now in poems

and essays sought to attach

their lesser name to your greater one.

See, Robert long-gone,

wise in words and less

in matters of the heart

and conduct, what I did

here; flaying the privileged

tying their name to yours

I did like them - but oh

bard of Scotland, I am

not your equal, but

just a maggot crawling

on your bones!

18.02.2018