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.
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