In 2009, the British artist, Roger Hiorns, pumped 80 000 litres
of copper sulphate solution into an condemned flat which, after two weeks,
was overtaken by crystals. He called the work, ‘Seizure’.
Now nothing of the lived-in place
but like a work of memory, where the flood was insatiate
these crystals mass edge upon edge and,
self-repeating, consume scale models of themselves
like facing mirrors haunted by the rooms they make—
rooms where you stand among the furnishings
alike simplified, alike held in a trick of light—
and they advance by repetition, axiom by axiom,
they show how facts enter into the machinery of dreams—
for here are broken fittings strung in mimic globes,
windows as of crushed glass grown upon itself
a treasury of jewels not worth trade—like patience
made into a way of life its walls close in
the flood again in time-lapse, waves coming always in.