READY TO KILL
(Carl Sandburg)

Ten minutes now I have been looking at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver
on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be
hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to you,
After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory
hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,
When they stack a few silhouettes
Against the sky
Here in the park,
And show the real huskies that are doing the work of
the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them,
Then maybe I will stand here
And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag
in the air,
And riding like hell on horseback
Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men
all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.

I was going to make that the last poem in my current season, but I've found another poem about John MacLean, a great source of bardic inspiration, it seems - Matt McGinn, Sorley MacLean, now Derick Thomson.

WARRIOR
(Derick Thomson)

In another age
you might have been "a warrior of Mull,"
John MacLean;
the history of your people flung you
into a new battle:
the Gael's exultant cry
coming from the chest of the Lowlands;
if only the flame lasted
it would write "Freedom" on Scotland's sky yet.

ARMANN
(Ruaridh MacThòmais)

Fear de dh'àrmainn Mhuile is dòcha
ann a linn eile,
Iain Mac'illEathain;
ach thilg eachdraidh do dhaoine
a chath ás ùr thu;
iolach a'Ghaidheil
a'tighinn á cliabh na Galldachd;
nam biodh seasmhachd ás a laisir
sgrìobhte "Saorsa" air nèamh Alba fhathast.