Andrew Young’s view of the natural world, as original as charming, is shown to good effect in these two little pieces. The Scottish poet-cleric’s Selected Poems are published by Carcanet at £9.95).

        IN BURNHAM BEECHES

Walking among these smooth beech-boles

With cracks and galls

And beetle-holes

And ivy trickling in green waterfalls,

~

I note carvings on their barks,

Faint and diffuse

As china-marks

On Worcester or Old Bow: I wondered whose.

~

I feared that time had played its part

With those whose token

Was a twin heart,

So many hearts the swelling bark had broken.

CORNISH FLOWER-FARM

Here where the cliff rises so high

The sea below fills half the sky

And ships hang in mid-air,

Set on the cliff-face, square by square,

Walls of veronica enclose

White gladioli in their neat rows

And blue and golden irises;

But though the walls grow tall as trees,

Some flowers from their quiet quillets pass

To mix with wayside weeds and grass,

Like nuns that from their strict retreats

Go visiting the poor in their plain streets.