Rattle down the shutters, cast away the key,

Relinquish the rivers at last to the sea,

    Old Jock of Lochranza,

    Taut as a stanza,

Can come no more for me.

My eager sole visitor was planted this week,

Six decades beyond his potency's peak;

    He was the salty, last

    Proof of my glorious past;

From here, the sea looks bleak.

It's out with the pension, no more red heels

To clack down the pier among wet nets and creels;

    I can't turn a head

    (When they are all dead)

From the sea's late purples and steels.

Hang up my whip, my scents, the tools of my trade,

That kept the fish-scaled men unstaid;

    From the tedium of wintered lives,

    Beyond the scowls of island wives,

Released them, glad-afraid.

Be you built like a rabbit, a shark, or a lorry,

    It's off with this make-up

    That let your dads wake up,

And I am sorry.