Experience teaches, but its lessons 
may be useless. I could have done without
a few whose only by-product is grief,

which, as waste, in its final form,
isn’t good for anything.

A helicopter beating all night above the firth,
a Druid shouting astrology 
outside the off-licence will eventually 
put the Ambien in ambience.

Our culture is best described as heroic. 
Courageous in self-promotion, noble 
in the circulation of others’ 
disgrace, our preoccupation with death