Let’s raise a glass to Robbie Burns,
Whose dialect, one soon discerns,
Can give the palate friction burns.
Don’t try the accent!
Or swallow, as the schoolchild learns,
Muscle relaxant.
Of course, I speak as someone foreign,
Unfit to wear the kilt or sporran:
My ancestry’s a rabbit warren
With no Scotch rabbits.
I’ve as much claim to be Andorran
As boast Scotch habits.
And therefore you might well impeach
My pseudo-Sassenach-y speech
As utterly unfit to screech
Its way through ‘Rabbie’.
“Try Wordsworth, yeah? Don’t overreach:
Try ‘Tintern Abbey.’”
But give me this, his favourite stanza:
A lyrical extravaganza!
Each six-line burst a fresh bonanza
Of sprung rhythm.
If only Yom Kippur or Kwanzaa
Could take this with them!
And why not! Could the bard be mine?
There’s Jewish wit in every line.
Was Burns not shortened from Bernstein?
And one more jab, I
Can’t believe you missed the sign:
Burns was a rabbi.