Two Poems: The January Birds and Stars and Jasmine

by Maurice Riordan

The January Birds

The birds in Nunhead Cemetery begin 
Before I've flicked a switch, turned on the gas. 
There must be some advantage to the light

I tell myself, viewing my slackened chin 
Mirrored in the rain-dark window glass, 
While from the graveyard?s trees, the birds begin.

An image from a dream survives the night, 
Some dreck my head refuses to encompass. 
There must be some advantage to the light.

You are you I mouth to my shadow skin, 
Though you are me, assuming weight and mass -- 
While from the graveyard?s trees, the birds begin:

Thrush, blackbird, finch -- then rooks take fright 
At a skip-truck and protest, cawing en masse. 
There must be some advantage to the light,

Or birds would need the gift of second sight 
To sing Another year will come to pass! 
The birds in Nunhead Cemetery begin, 
There must be some advantage to the light. 

Stars and Jasmine 

Each of them has been a god many times: 
cat, hedgehog and -- our Summer interloper -- the tortoise. 
A perfect triangle, they can neither marry 
nor eat one another. 
And tonight they are gods 
who have made us laugh 
under the jasmine under the stars.

Already, the hedgehog has stolen the cat?s supper 
and, nonplussed, she has walked beside him 
rushing headlong into the bushes. 
Wisely now, she keeps an eye on him 
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. 
It is 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. 
Come September, we will post her through the letterbox.