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
- Владимир Набоков – Есть в одиночестве свобода
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Напрасные жертвы
- Land, Ho! by Thomas Edward Brown
- Михаил Лермонтов – Хаджи Абрек
- Quicksand Years. by Walt Whitman
- Doomsday by Sylvia Plath
- Dedication To Lady Windsor poem – Alfred Austin
- Linoz Isidoz poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Epigrams against the Earl of Galloway by Robert Burns
- The Heart Of The Woman by William Butler Yeats
- Владимир Бенедиктов – С могучей страстию в мучительной борьбе
- The Mortal One by Sharon Olds
- YOU ARE CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY by Steve Troyanovich
- Владимир Маяковский – Чтоб жизнь трудовую наладить заново
- Владимир Высоцкий – Веселая покойницкая
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).
