Paul Holman

'The first book'


The first book
is headed
materials: it contains
the usual tickets, labels,
receipts

that we all keep, because
we have learned
how to look at them
now, whether from collage
or a love

of ephemera; a postcard
for Mark Pawson
at Eeklo; my old prose
notes and a description
of the route

I take through Victoria
Park when I
go into work, past the
enclosure
for deer and a few

small goats (the same
kind that my stepmother
kept) and the stone
dogs of
Alcibiades; some pages

of letters; the text
of 'A Friend
to Theocritus in Egypt'.