Stars and Jasmine
by Maurice Riordan
Each of them has been a god many times:
cat, hedgehog and – our summer interloper – the tortoise.
A perfect triangle, they can neither eat
nor marry one another.
And tonight they are gods
under the jasmine under the stars.
Already the hedgehog has scoffed the cat’s supper
and she’s walked nonplussed beside him
escaping headlong into the bushes.
Wisely now, she keeps an eye on him there,
and on the tortoise
noisily criss-crossing the gravel.
For the cat, jasmine is white
but the stars have colours.
For the hedgehog, there are no stars
only a sky of jasmine,
against which he sniffs something dark,
outlined like a bird of prey.
Wisely, the tortoise ignores both jasmine and stars.
Isn’t it enough, she says, to carry the sky on your back,
a sky that is solid, mathematical and delicately coloured –
on which someone, too, has painted
our neighbours’ address: 9a Surrey Rd.
Come September, we will post her through their letterbox.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Snapshots Of A Daughter In Law By Adrienne Rich
- The Nuclear Ghost Towns
- The Masks of Love
- Rhyming Reply to a Note from Captain Riddell by Robert Burns
- Владимир Корнилов – Игра судьбы
- The Fearful by Sylvia Plath
- There is a Community of Spirit by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- A Celebration by William Carlos Williams
- Эмиль Верхарн – Воскресное утро
- The Given Heart
- Poet’s Corner poem – Alfred Austin
- Primrose Rose by Rainbow Reed
- Ольга Берггольц – Мне не поведать о моей утрате
- Maudlin by Sylvia Plath
- A Dialogue Betwixt Himself and Mistress Eliza Wheeler, under the Name of Amarillis by Robert Herrick
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
