The Scream

I recently missed, by error,  an excellent lecture about the painter Edvard Munch’s work, with particular reference to his best known painting ‘The Scream’.  Two days later I found a remarkable hagstone (i.e. a stone pierced by one or more holes).

PLEASE PUSH THE ARROW BUTTON TO HEAR THIS POEM

 

 

Munch first named it ‘The scream from nature’
A re-creation of the Metaphysical moment
in January 1892 when the turmoil
of a blood red sky scoured as sound
within his tired brain,  was stored,
then morphed into a modern Icon;
where we can place ourselves, trapped –
this side of the endless barrier of stricture
along the linear structure of conformity,
as beyond the pale the randomness rages,
time is infinite and chance rules.

 

Trimmed in title to ‘The Scream’
the swirled paint was sanctified
by 120 million dollars in 2012.
A million dollars a year
since brush touched paint.
What value for a pebble simulacrum
of terror from The Scream –
sculpted by the sea
for a million years
then displayed, free,  for me
on stony Dunwich beach?