The Old Liar’s Paintings
I’ve given up, he said
To a friend of a friend
But canvases lay stacked
Beneath the table,
Scattered on the floor,
And he was painting more.
A friend’s friend told me this
Placing his own landscapes
On chairs round my friend’s room.
He’d shown them the old liar
When he dared knock
On his Salford door.
The old man liked them, as did I,
But meeting my friend’s friend,
Two score and more years later,
At my friend’s funeral
He remembered not - and he
Had quite forgotten me.
Salford Parade
Homage to L.S.L.
The dogs curious or indifferent,
Sniffing, sitting, watching
All with stalky legs, long snout,
The children, too, curious
About these adults marching,
Slouching, hands trailing,
Some squinting sideways,
Others sternly forward,
Or looking glumly down,
Five men at the front
Women in second rank
A few heads peering up
Watched the painter
Slyly eyeing them
As they marched beneath,
None alike, but none fat,
Tall, short, thin, dots for eyes
And Lowry said to me:
This is my country
One I recognized as mine
In a childhood world
I’d left behind
But where he stayed
And still remains
The Rent Collector
The wet cobbled Salford street
Funnels to a dead white sky
(In years to come
The rent collector said
Chalk turns to cream)
Receding on the far paving,
Towards the vanishing point
Trots a little boy in black
Beside a pale white lady
With a white umbrella.
The house fronts gleam damply
Wet sills of black windows
Arrow inward and backward.
The light of the street lamp
Is swallowed by daylight
The drainpipes lead downwards
To the wet cobbled roadway
Where a man with a bag
Cold hands in coat pockets
Advances towards us.
The street without gardens
Has backyards and coal sheds
But no sound re-echoes
From behind or within
No round-shouldered coalman
(Park champion at bowling)
Humps bags on his day job
No horse snorts, no carter
No Ragbone! in the alley,
And in the street only
The man with a bag.
The figures he painted
Do not crowd into doorways
Stand watching on doorsteps
They remain in blank houses
Behind the black windows
He’d caught them in motion
Big boots on matchsticks
Stalking the townscape
Vital as sulphur
Coming and going
Hands dangling or pointing.
He showed what he saw
A pure imperfection:
I do not Salford Elders
Make fun of your people
Yes I paint what I see
Though it makes you irate
Since it’s you that I laugh at
Yes I’m having a laff
For Manchester bought it
There’s fun and there’s sadness
In what he depicted
But he will not tell you
Who haunts in his pictures
I miss her and find her
In the solitude round me
As I walk the wet cobbles
Toward you who are watching
To collect what you owe me
Yes I know what you owe me.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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