An atmospheric March poem from poet-cleric Andrew Young, showing his customary feeling for nature and the originality of his response to it. The piece comes from his Selected Poems (Carcanet, £9.95).

THE VENTRILOQUISTS

The birds sang in the rain

That rhythmically waving its grey veil

From smoking hilltop flowed to misty plain,

Where one white house shone sharply as a sail;

~

But not so bright as these,

The anemones that held the wood snow-bound,

The water-drops waiting to fall from trees,

The rusty catkins crawling on the ground.

~

March buds give little shelter;

Better seek shelter in the open rain

Than where tree-gathered showers fall helter-skelter,

I meditated; but ‘Turn, turn again’,

~

The birds shrieked through their song;

So rooted to the leaf-soft earth I stood,

Letting my restless eye wander among

The thick sky-crawling branches of the wood.

~

But no bird could I see

In criss-cross of thin twigs or sudden twists

Where branching tree interrupted branching tree;

Yet everywhere those hidden ventriloquists

~

Were singing in the wood,

Flinging their cheating voices here and there;

But seeing nothing though I walked or stood

I thought the singing grew out of the air.