ThursdayI August

The Artist’s Portrait of A Man

20th century man.
Over 100 years old.
Hogging his dark frame.

Sack-cloth clothes,
In oily blacks and reds.
Are grubby dark brown.
Scratched and dabbed the figure of a man.
Aping boxy city shapes.
His square head is bowed,
large limbs curled like a child.

Factory time.
Silenced by the din.
The model is deaf and dumb.
His presence pierces with a piston’s pressure.
In this image of public thrum.

With surgical precision,
The artist’s vision
Slices through the haze.
And explodes into 21st century’s day-to-day.

His hanging head in shining oils,
Hangs hard as hammer like fists anchoring
the figure to the bottom frame.
How is it that this big handed man
Has a quickening line to the heart?