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.