here's the first of the last three of the captions I wrote for Adam Harrison's photographs--


Condensation on Mirror

Kavanagh's "bright
shillings of March"
well spent for aince:

conker string,
a brand-new set of clackers,
a towel that becomes

a sleeping cat then disappears,
a camera that puts the silver
back into the lake, all those

pets and old uncles released
from whispering branches
and skins of chrome

to fistfuls of earth
and muscular sepia--
never to be recorded otherwise,

like the mound people,
sieved once through Toynbee's catbox
but never written down,

not even in steam
not even to spend a penny,
dredged up from a Murphy bed

into the coalsmoke
and cigarette smoke
and cabbage steam.