Four Poems by Jon Ware

Dimension Stone

On the Ysgyrd Fawr,
let your nailtips like dodmen turn
fault-lines in the bracchia,
onion-peel manifest in rot.
The cold certainty will crumb
apart to revetment fraction
and loess: this stone, which once
was knapped from Hereford hillside
by invaded cairn-slumberers,
encasing kneaded bronze, infant
marrow in an asphalt grip:
primed to blurt like magma into
a hiker’s transgressive embrace.


Dog Star

White Tiger, Krittika.
Camelopardalis,
the Cross, Vulpecula:

silver serpents winking
in violet oblivion,
in clarity of nothing.

Bharani, Black Tortoise,
the Vermillion Bird.
Sirius, the watchhound,

alarming at distant
black holes and time
beyond our sight. You name

each new constellation
over the meadow; I
lie silent and regard

the gathered auspices;
every image dancing
in a darkling absence.


Doomsday Vault

The snow flourishes
and spreads, dawnlight
crossing mountains;
a diamond progress

that scatters last
footprints and heals
the broken brink.
Arctic winds shed

and gather in
afferent breath;
at the snow’s core,
below airlock

glass, an infant
spins in magnet’s
motion: blood-germ,
beggars’ harvest.


The Lovers

When the sea woke
at Portishead, our tongues
were opposed in rage
and our bodies would not speak.

Below trailless skies
we combine, sinking in
submerged karst, bones knotted
in wry androgyny.