This is one of a few poems I have written in the Scots tongue – it just flows so much better.

Maya Angelou said this: “My name is Maya Angelou. I grew up on dirt roads… I was a mute. I was poor and black and female. The only key I had which would open the door to the world for me was a book. I read everything. I fell in love with poetry. And amazingly in a small village in Arkansas, I met Robert Burns.”

Whit can we dae wi sic a tender pairin’ as Burns and Maya Angelou?
She kens weel why the caged bird sings
He turned o’er the mouse’s hame and stood stondstill stairin’
At the fear that destitution brings
She sang tae all wi ears tae hear of things unknown but longed for still
With ivery picture in her ivery tale she keept her eyes upon the prize
She said ‘take my mouse’s earth but still, like dust I’ll rise’.

Hey Robin, she micht hae called ye oot on mony fronts
Just one poem aboot slavery and slaves?
She micht hae asked why you let your crazed an passionate waves
Sweep lovers oot tae sea, who loved but once and loved forever.
But she never.
She never thocht you should be retro-fitted to oor age
Or asked why you didna see where her birds were caged.
She kent weel that callin auld acquaintance back to mind
Is what keeps us humankind.

Oh Robert, for all that ye were such a catch,
I think with Maya you’d have found your match