Two little reflections on nature by the Elgin-born poet-cleric Andrew Young, with stars, real or symbolic, as the link. His Selected Poems are published by Carcanet at £9.95.
DAISIES
The stars are everywhere tonight,
Above, beneath me and around;
They fill the sky with powdery light
And glimmer from the night-strewn ground;
For where the folded daisies are
In every one I see a star.
~
And so I know that when I pass
Where no man’s shadow counts the hours
And where the sky was there is grass
And where the stars were there are flowers,
Through the long night in which I lie
Stars will be shining in my sky.
THE COBWEB
Where idle cobwebs mist the furze
And shake with the least wind that stirs
Their outspread pattern on twig-fork,
Belying the keen spider’s work
Against one trembling web has blown
And struck a starry thistle-down.
~
Hid in the shadow of a leaf
I see that spider nurse his grief,
A close-hunched ball; content enough
I spring the crafty cobwebs of
My labour and my idleness
To catch a star by its silken tress.
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