THIS last winter has confronted us with more wind and rain than snow. But that does not detract from the atmosphere of this exquisite little poem by Andrew Young with its powerful, life-affirmative, last image.

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.