The Old Guitarist

Here's the first of a series of poems written by TY pupils after a recent poetry module in on 'the image in art'. Click here for Ms Smith's introduction to the module. This poem, by Thomas Emmet, was written in response to Pablo Picasso's painting 'The Old Guitarist':-


The Old Guitarist, by Thomas Emmet

The Spanish guitar hangs
From his crumpled, haggard frame.
His deathly thin arms stretch
across it, strumming.
Each note a clawing testimony,
To his need for money, food, and life.

It wasn’t always like this.
Once, there was a home,
Once, there was a family.
It was debt that ate
These things, stole them away.

So now he sits,
Strumming the shadow
of what he was.