A DRUNK MAN LOOKS AT THE THISTLE
By:
June 29, 2024
A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.
I’ve often thrawn the warld frae me,
Into the Pool o’ Space, to see
The Circles o’ Infinity.
Or like a flat stone gar’d it skite,
A Morse code message writ in licht
That yet I couldna read aricht
The skippin’ sparks, the ripples, rit
Like skritches o’ a grain o’ grit
‘Neth Juggernaut in which I sit.
Twenty-six thoosand years it tak’s
Afore a’e single roond it mak’s,
And syne it melts as it were wax.
The Phaenix guise ‘tll rise in syne
Is mair than Euclid or Einstein
Can dream o’ or’s in dreams o’ mine.
— An excerpt from A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926), in which explicit reference is made to Euclid and Einstein.
A poem of extremes, it ranges between comic and serious modes and examines a wide range of cultural, sexual, political, scientific, existential, metaphysical and cosmic themes, ultimately unified through one consistent central thread, the poet’s affectively charged contemplation, looking askance at the condition of Scotland.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.