21 FEBRUARY 1987, Page 34

While the Sun Shines

Your tulips and your tulip tree I see blooming, just for me.

Your peaches flower and fruit and rot; I suck their scent and you do not.

Windfall secrets finger my face, Breathed through walls that divide your place From the rest of the world. Innocent flowers Are shut away, like maidens in towers: You, their lord, are off jousting for money, While the bees and I make hay and honey.

'Elspeth Durie