Poems about Edinburgh’s and Glasgow’s botanic gardens have featured in this spot. Now it’s Belfast’s turn. Anne Connolly’s return visit to the gardens can be found in her pamphlet Downside Up (Calder Wood Press, £4.50). Born in County Antrim, she taught for many years in Ireland, England, and Scotland, where she has now settled. -- Lesley Duncan

BACK TO THE BOTANICS AT QUEENS

Where are the hundred thousand welcomes?
Earphones close away hellos, and sink
the boom-boom into egocentric beats.
Lone joggers pound their rhythms against
the slower cadence of a warm breeze
not yet allowed into the Tropical House
which opens at one for Saturday lie-ins.
Birds sound the same seesaw repetitions.
Fledglings burp and then pure fluid blackbird
tilts on the skymost branch where saffron legs
can meld into the sun. Railings guard the grass
where we used to laze and smell the day rising,
share a smoke although I hardly knew how,
catch up on last night’s craic. Dream. A couple
half turn, break the cameo, snatch a whiff of the past.

Another variation on the infinite theme of human relationships. It is by the distinguished poet and Russian translator Elaine Feinstein and can be found in her Collected Poems and Translations, Carcanet, £14.95). -- Lesley Duncan

JEOPARDY

All year I’ve watched the velvet glow
of your happiness, seen you flow
towards him, while he bathes in your spirit;
a glittering exchange of tongue and wit.
I’ve known what you wanted most was
the risk of giving without calculation.

Now he consumes your pleasure along
with grapes, tree fungus, red nectar,
and since he is no ordinary sailor,
takes the island for his own, as he
receives your enchanted songs.
Calypso, Calypso,

What he gives in return is splendour:
partly his own, and partly the mirror
in which you perceive your own beauty:
the sum of everything he ever loved.
Relishing the energy of his self-concern,
you have already forgiven his onward journey.

Is the folded paper a love message that literally, as well as figuratively perhaps, has eroded through time? Maura Dooley’s short but powerful poem hints at the complexities of a relationship. It comes from her new collection, Life Under Water (Bloodaxe Books, £7.95). - Lesley Duncan

BY AIR

If I want to blush
I think of your wallet,
not a lock of hair
but words, my old words,
whatever they were,
folded into four and kept
till they crack along the creases
or the ink rubs away
and each character is released,
a flock of birds wheeling,
that distant calling,
the failure to alight.

Maybe James Aitchison (who lives in Stirling) is too negative about stargazing possibilities in the Central Belt, but he describes vividly the pleasure and wonder of viewing a clear (or almost clear) sky at night. -- Lesley Duncan

STARGAZING

Dog and Bull, Great Bear and Little Bear -
I’ve never seen star-creatures in the sky.
And here in middle Scotland I could stare
all night and never see a single star.
They’re lost in megawatts of man-made light:
no Swan, no Pegasus and no Ploughshare.
A telescope - I’ve tried - can’t magnify
what’s out of sight.

But when I went outside at night to smoke
in a garden in Up Hatherley -
I lived in Gloucestershire for a few years -
then I saw them. And the more I looked
the more I saw. Stars broke through clouds’ thin cloak
and strobed in spaces between stars:
angelic needlepoint, celestial joke
in spaces between spaces between stars.

What a boost for blondes! The playful poet is W B Yeats. Is the addressee Lady Gregory, stalwart of the Irish Revival and co-founder with Yeats, and another, of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin? She certainly takes a very pragmatic view of hair dyeing. -- Lesley Duncan

FOR ANNE GREGORY

‘Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.’

‘But I can get a hair-dye
And set each colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair.’

‘I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.’

This playful, paternal pledge from Edward Thomas rolls off the tongue with its litany of place-names and floral images. -- Lesley Duncan

IF I SHOULD EVER BY CHANCE

If I should ever by chance grow rich
I’ll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,
Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater,
And let them all to my elder daughter.
The rent I shall ask of her will be only
Each year’s first violets, white and lonely,
The first primroses and orchises -
She must find them before I do, that is.
But if she finds a blossom on the furze
Without rent they shall all for ever be hers,
Codham, Cockridden and Childerditch,
Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater, -
I shall give them all to my elder daughter.