Walsall Art Gallery

 
 
From the terrace the sky was grey
roof lines zigged and zagged in careless confusion,
the town below me stretching, or so it seemed
to the Cannock hills bright in the setting sun.
Random streets and snickets, no plans
that I could see two hundred years it took
no harm in that, but was there need for leather-works
so close to school-ground-gates or pigeon lofts ?
I stand aloft, enjoy the breeze glass doors at my back,
the jigsaw streets each locked and fitting close,
tiles of many colours at jaunty angles;
spires, chapel towers and flat topped factories,
their chimneys still this Sunday afternoon.
I cannot paint and have no brushes,
my camera is at home but remember all I see,
little folk with shopping bags,tricycles,
furred up arteries of yesterday,a long boat
its curtains drawn,plant-pots on the roof.
Would that I could tell you more of what I see
my pen limp in my hand,perhaps one day you'll call
pass the paintings on the walls, Epstein busts. . .
his many loves, moulded as in his hands.
Take with me the silent lift passing windows
framing other scenes such that Lowry draws
of match-stick children, cats and cloudless sky.
See hoardings shouting at the street,
those in buses reading as they pass
of perfume, razor blades and Guinness,
selling space and advertising
keeping secret from the public
the future of their city
where JCBs move piles of earth
to mould a future better than the past.
The place where workers toiled,
houses where they lived cheek-by-jowl
in terrace row and corner shop
midst laughter, spinning tops and shawls
smutted wash lines wall to wall.
Evening pubs with glittering mirrors
nicotine ceilings, sawdust floors,
counters lined with glasses,
as the hooter sounds the end of day
on the way to home, to crowded street,
like seagulls on the cliffs at Flambro'
(how did they know which nest?).
Wife and kids around the table,
scrubbed white no cloth to hide the knots
armchair for Dad, stools for the children
chair beside the sink for Mam.
Pigeons to feed and whippets,
shoes to sole and wood to chop,
fishing canals for roach and pike
barges low with coal and pots from Stoke.
Smells of tanning,thumping hammers,
freight trains through the night,
flashing furnace fires,bed by ten,up at six
Blake's ‘Jerusalem’ on a school piano.