Lowry's Marionette

A charcoal smear, a graphite edge,
A figure twisted and grey,
A distorted toy of a girl named Ann,
Scrunched and crumpled, hidden away.

It has no strings, this marionette,
This mannequin’s icy stare,
Who stashed your secret in the loft,
And kept it hidden there.
And Salvador Dali would have twirled his moustache,
How can something so ordinary,
Be so beautiful?
What troubled times those eyes have seen,
Yet time was on your side,
And who’s this broken girl, this Ann,
This child, this woman, this bride?
And chopped-up blocks of wood strung up,
And carelessly assembled,
This steady grip of finite grace,
A hand that never trembled.
And Salvador Dali would have twirled his moustache,
How can something so ordinary,
Be so beautiful?
How precisely you honed your craft,
While critics claimed ‘naïve’!
‘You’ve got one trick!’ They had no clue,
What you had up your sleeve.
Who is this girl, some secret love?
A vision from beyond the grave?
A charcoal image, awash with age,
Of figures, naked and brave.
And Salvador Dali would have twirled his moustache,
How can something so ordinary,
Be so beautiful?
They’re all too grey and angular,
The skies too dark and dull,
What lover’s eye could appreciate,
An image crowded and full?
And Salvador Dali would have twirled his moustache,
How can something so ordinary,
Be so beautiful?
Manchester, nineteen-thirty-eight,
A crowd of people leaving a factory on a rainy Thursday night,
Being met by children, as shoppers rush home.
So ordinary. So mundane.
So mundane.
So beautiful.