Badly burned in love, the poet
signed into the Burns unit
He said my heart is torched
my world is up in flames

What's your name and address?

He joined a circle, a broken circle
of rhymers, chanters and alcoholic bards
they told their stories, they opened their hearts

The man in charge filed
it all away in his photographic mind -
a new book in the pipeline!

He listened carefully to the rhyme
and rhythm of their mellifluous speech,
the cadences, the pronunciations
and intonations of Scottish, Cumbrian
and Midlands English,their brogues
and burrs and local regional words;

Badly burned in love, Robert
from Ayrshire told how Highland Mary
took his rose but left him with the thorn -
Am no happy, am awfy sad,
ah miss ma Mary's hielin' bahoochie!

William from the Lake District
expressed profound regret
that the lass from Kendal
hadn't responded to his letters yet
I'm wandrin' lonely as a cloud!

and the man from Stratford-on-Avon,
the loneliest bard in the kingdom
(bar the opium fiend Francis Thompson)
said he felt gutted like King Lear,
as betrayed and bloodied as Julius Caesar
more misunderstood than Hamlet,
as suicidal as Cleopatra -
I hath a melancholy heart
and doth wish for sweet Death!

The man in charge felt vindicated;
his Burns unit was a success,
and his heart went out to all the burnt poets!