30 AUGUST 1986, Page 23

Is a rose a rose?

A pig under a tree in the Peloponnese Is a pig under a tree . . . But add to these Facts of zoology, botany, geography, A south wind, fulvous evening light, you, me, Fecundity and idleness, then snap! Memory's caught in a photographic trap, And birth and death and marriage won't efface That animal, an olive and the place.

James Michie