Back in June 2013 I eluded to a poem based on the painting DISCORD [1943] by Lowry. This is it....Hello again, it's nice to be back....
Old Weird North (after Lowry)
Either strangeness - full of sticks
or fellows with oily buttery skin
outlined like an Egyptian eye
encased in ruddy brick
It only makes his mouth twitch -
this North
Where men present there rigid backs -
tombstone stance
A few wives pause
between line peg and sheet
what was a fleeting chance
a pigeon soon puts stop to that
Isolated and obsolete - together
in two up two down
a grimy look to the broods
a frown from groggy clouds
catching the serpents
smoking their swirly chains
towards the sky
Lines of angled buildings
planted out tubas
puffing like a dowsed brass band
and the man with a heavy hand
smiting the land
the dark dark
land
His downward strokes
pulls them feet first and
all the throngs’ troop up the hill
leaning - as if in a
sharp strong
wind
A mothers silence over the surface
Father beyond family
past box beyond frame
has lost for a moment his place
till recollects the Northern tone
sing the children face to face
“brace them walls” for winter -
daub it white so white
when cold is there to ring
the rosy grey -
grey like the dog’s bloodless
bone
and baby’s lifeless
skin
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