Ah, Edinburgh!
Consider its potential!
It will be lovely
when it is finished. Meanwhile,
stay away from John Lewis.
A second blitzkrieg,
men digging for victory,
the rape of the Mound
undermine its foundations.
The Castle is teetering.
Queen Street’s off-limit
Princes Street is a bomb site,
Palmerston Place closed,
Charlotte Square a labyrinth
and Ferry Road a chicane.
Tourists are confused,
bus drivers and visitors
bemused, in a maze,
homecoming expatriates
drifting dazed, like refugees.
Avoid Duddingston,
Melville Drive, Musselburgh
and Portobello.
Deep excavations surround
the King’s Park. Holes and earthworks.
They are installing
state-of-the-art catacombs
all over the show.
They hope to unearth black gold
and find the Northwest Passage.
I would love to meet
our megalomaniac
Roadworks Planning Chief,
our mad Traffic Supremo,
and present a love token—
a red traffic cone,
still pristine, Noddy-coloured.
I’d ram it tightly
over his ears, a dunce’s
hat, just like the Ku Klux Klan’s.