Stug Jordan Poems

How ancient you look, old man,
How like a living antique
You look today.
...

In the end she tried to say
that the best poetry
was like a line
of perfect symmetry.
...

Bird fraught with anger,
Sailing fury through skies -
The sway of provocative treetops,
...

When all the mums sweep spring
From the doorsteps they let the boys
Loose on the summer,
A megalomania of new hair and teeth,
...

Twists her hips and grins
like the victim
of a parlour game.
And the black dice choose her;
...

Life’s found me, atop your metal stairs
with sunset and a morphine silliness;
but the clocks cheat us, rushing age the raging
hours that for me, for you, seem stopped;
...

Man danced
Woman faltered.
The room spun
Accordingly.
...

And they called her Ophelia
But her name was Sue,
Though her serpentine body
Still knocked against the sluice gate
...

An eye in the wood winks
onto the wet road,
and the birds tremble down
to earth, lightly
...

His smile is a zigzag on stone,
a face carved into a silent megalith.

His officers are represented by rocks;
...