Andrew Young looks at the natural world with engaging perception and originality, as these two little pieces show. They come from his Selected Poems, published by Carcanet at £9.95.

SPRING FLOWERS

Now we enjoy the rain,

When at each neighbour’s door we hear

‘How big primroses are this year’ -

Tale we may live to hear again -

And dandelions flood

The orchards as though apple-trees

Dropped in the grass ripe oranges,

Boughs still in pink impatient bud,

When too we cannot choose,

But one foot and the other set

In celandine and violet,

Walking in gold and purple shoes,

Rain that through winter weeks

Splashed on our face and window pane,

And rising in these flowers again

Brightens their eyes and fats their cheeks.

YOUNG OATS

These oats in autumn sown,

That stood through all the winter’s dearth

In so small ranks of green

That flints like pigmies’ bones lay bare

And greater stones were seen

To change to hares and rise and run,

Today to such a height are grown

That drawn up by the sun,
That Indian conjuror,

The field is levitated from the earth.