Poem

SWAN

after Jordan’s Dance

SHOLTO BUCK

This is a formal experiment in violence, addressed
to the joke of purity. She dances
against pleasure. Nature, entropy, dereliction, fat.
The tutu and the garbage fire. Diaphanous
heat exudes from each and both imply the swift
collapse of beauty. This loss is inept
to the expression of grace that is
our birthright. Wet dirt. I am standing under
a bridge. Linear shadow.
She does a slow-motion bounce. Ash floats
through the air like bugs.
What we might call urban. A muscly guy
wearing a Greek god on his face. The word carnivalesque,
the burning Union Jack. It makes me think
of Leda and the Swan, she is playing
both parts. Whirling bright,
a catastrophe. Minimal
and brutal costuming, I can see it
coming apart, my black suit
jacket at the shoulder. Gleaming
hair scissors.

This response was commissioned by Gus Fisher Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Derek Jarman: Delphinium Days, 2024.