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Foreign Flowers

The light is bright

And hot, and the many shades of purple,

The colour of the Mediterranean,

Are everywhere for all to see.


The bougainvillea is ablaze,

A burning bush of glowing fire.

And the hibiscus lifts her trumpets

Day by day

To play to the sun,

And each flower dies at night,

And then lies spent and shrivelled on the ground.


“Out with your mobile now!

Take a photo here

And another there

For all the flowers here are fair.”


Among these gaudy colours that impress,

I just stop and think

Of the quiet and timid violet,

Lying under a thick hedge of hawthorn there,

In the uncertain sun after a short sharp shower,

At home in Somerset in spring.