Keir Hardie Street, an excerpt
Alan Morrison

Born in a haunted corner of Scotland, of kelpie-
Humped lochs and Pan-piped galloping woods,
Close to Claverhouse’s groomed dragoons;
Illegitimate son of a servant-girl from Legbrannock,
Step-sired by an atheist carpenter,
Schooled in obscurity’s cramped one-roomed house,
Raised on porridge oats and Robbie Burns —
‘Lines on Seeing a Wounded Hare’
Fuelled him on compassion’s damp-steaming anger —
Fired in the pit of his belly’s grumbling brogue,
Conscience-lit by spark of injustice at first hand
As a brow-crowded child, a Little Father Time
Gifted burning vision, he cast off Calvinism…
And donned the kinder-clothed Baptist overalls,
Marched with the miners to massed Annbank brass,
Learnt to speak in temperance meetings, teetotal of tongue,
Soap-box for a pulpit, tugged himself up rung by rung,
From blacklisted collier to collared correspondent
For the Airdrie District — editor of The Miner...

Then Politics: Member for North-West Ham,
Took his seat in Parliament in red tie and tweeds,
Alternate cap or deerstalker, no frockcoat for he,
Braced in proletariat spiritual khakis;
Mrs. Grundy almost fainted when she scanned
The costume of the new-comer but for her
Smelling salts — O what a brouhaha!
So offended was she by this chiselled, bearded pauper
Replete in blue serge double-breasted jacket,
Fawn-coloured trousers, striped flannel shirt,
Scarf round his neck in a sailor’s knot…