2 JANUARY 1993, Page 23

Right

Flowers are right at marriages and funerals.

They speak as tongues cannot as, round the altar, clumped in graveyards, we take root.

Their colours flare, unauthored and unearthly.

They sing out, preach no text, not even this, that something blessed has gone past.

Yet it was live, warm, human hands that picked them, women's eyes, no doubt, who saw what must go where, what might be tendered to the law.

William Scammell