WHAT better way to end this sequence of seasonal and weather-related poems than with this masterly piece by Andrew Young, combining his usual close observation with a dramatic final flourish?
His selected poems are published by Carcanet at £9.95.
LAST SNOW
Although the snow still lingers
heaped on the ivy's blunt webbed fingers
And painting tree-trunks on
one side,
Here in this sunlit ride
The fresh unchristened things
appear,
Leaf, spathe and stem,
With crumbs of earth clinging
to them
To show the way they
came
But no flower yet to tell
their name,
And one green spear
Stabbing a dead leaf from
below
Kills winter at a blow.
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