The Owl of Minerva

The Owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk

From the Finnieston Crane she flies east

Agricola's Clota, the half-light

Where the rapids of revolution

Give way to riverbanks of financialisation

Mungo's children lie in slumber

In ballrooms of pleasure, in bars of L

Silent forges of production

She comes to settle on a red road in ruin

She ponders

What will rise from these broken bricks of Utopia?

New futures, new presents, or new pasts?

And still the river flows

The Owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk

From the Finnieston Crane she flies west

Colonial gardens, bourgeois baths

Boulevards great and western

Four story - tenemental

Sandstones red and blonde

Georgian terraces, parks of circus

Kelvin bridges, The Three Judges

Stones of Arlington stitched by Polish tailors

In halls of oriental residence

She comes to settle on a flagpole of learning

She ponders

If the past is simply random, non-systematic motion

Why does it always settle into patterns

Of scarcity and oppression?

And still the river flows

The Owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk

From the Finnieston Crane she flies south

Gorbals teens, Glasgow Greens

Housing schemes expansive

Citizens from Bengal, Donegal

Dip bread in the ghost of Viking cauldrons

Longships - long gone

But in the hour of the wolf, tramways transport

Third eyes to midsummer wakes on Cathkin Braes

Where Joyce's donkey carnivals in Castlemilk

She comes to settle on a golden dome of worship

She ponders

What value the ragpicker who rakes through the

Dustbin of history, conjuring a constellation of possibility?

And still the river flows

The Owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk

From the Finnieston Crane she flies north

Hills of hag, hills of lamb, canals Forth and Clyde

She surveys a slow-motion majestic panorama

Poor of coin but rich in gallus swagger

Beyond the black hills of Molendinar

Burn! A gallery of preachers on a highway of historical time

Proddy John

Commie John

Bible John

Christ! Even Poppers John

She comes to settle, home, on her cantilevered roost

She ponders

She ponders

If the past is just one thing after another

Perhaps interruption is the true revolutionary act

And still the river flows