Jonathan Morley

Let's look at Jonathan Morley's poem "Iberian Baroque" in TheWolf, issue 17, April 2008. It has a really interesting cast to it, and a great look at 'ancient-focused'/theme poetry [often done by the Modernists] a bit further afield. It's great, with a heavy sense of reality, air and space.

Here's an excerpt:

[...]                 Wreaths 
of stone flowers curve in the arch 
whose foot is on my head.  No gold. 
Other heads are set about me, 
animals:  Beaver , from Labrador, 
Yaguara , from the January River: 
larger than mine, my head was shrunk 
to allow for the enlarged earlobes. 
No gold on this stone totem. 
Around, beyond the chain of the arch 
everything in gold: heaven, 
I saw this scrawl on shields of mashed feathers 
when Quetzalcoatl, feathered snake 
appeared from the East as a bearded man; 
heard it uttered when [...]