I painted beaches, seasides, shores
or waves dashed on a harbour wall,
a mackerel sky, a signature,
to peddle to the gullible,
until the seasons ran aground
with darkly varnished fishing smacks
or chalk-white gulls soared to astound
the cliffs that threw their shadows back.
My friend Proudhon said property
was theft and so each rock and shell,
each stone turned over by the sea,
was never mine to lift or sell;
as if I’d stumbled on by chance,
light-fingered, dawn’s exuberance,
pickpocketing, as morning came,
sienna, cobalt, cadmium.
To artists who won’t know my name,
who never saw me scumbling through,
close to the edge in some cheap frame,
my smudged dishonesties of blue,
I leave this calotype of me
exposed by time, dressed for the lens,
white smock, straw hat, iron-grey goatee,
a charlatan old sunlight sends
through silver layers of halide
to haunt, accuse, release, appease
all those who, when the oils have dried,
might know themselves for forgeries.
