Scotland’s first National Poet, (The Scots Makar), Edwin Morgan, has died at age 90 in Glasgow, the city of his birth and lifelong home.  Eclectic, experimental, melancholic yet joyful, his work is been oft imitated but never bettered. He was a much beloved, irreplaceable figure in Glasgow’s and Scotland’s literary life. “A great, generous, gentle genius has gone…” (Photo by Tricia Malley Ross).
He wrote a poem to celebrate the opening of Scotland’s Parliament in 2004, filled with his trademark humor and hope. Perhaps it’s his optimism we’ll miss the most… 


… (The people) want it to be 
filled with thinking persons as open and adventurous as its
architecture.
A nest of fearties is what they do not want.
A symposium of procrastinators is what they do not want.
A phalanx of forelock-tuggers is what they do not want.
And perhaps above all the droopy mantra of ‘it wiznay me’ is
what they do not want.
… So now begin. Open the doors and begin.