The Lonely Ones, by Mike Lewis-Beck

Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), by Edvard Munch (Norway) 1899, printed 1917

The Lonely Ones
 
      By Edvard Munch (Norwegian), 1917, 1935
      Fogg Museum, Harvard University
 
All the lonely people. Where do they all belong?
asked Father McKenzie in “Eleanor Rigby.” 
 
Where do these two lonely people belong?
In the early Munch, or the late Munch?
 
Not in the early one, with its hard coloring,
shadowy and pale, paint dripping tear-like.
 
Landscape sea-tossed, faces blank.
No hands, no touch. Two in a jump line.
 
The man dark, waiting, like a push,
to follow the woman white into the water.
 
Yes, in the late one, a bit larger
with more approach, singular swaths of colour,
 
visible drawn lines, his spontaneous look
and pointing toe, no menacing storm.
 
The couple side by side, her hair aglow.
They contemplate the calming sea, and dream.
 
Mike Lewis-Beck

Mike Lewis-Beck writes from Iowa City. He has pieces in American Journal of Poetry, Alexandria Quarterly, Apalachee Review, Aromatica Poetica, Big Windows Review, Birdseed, Black Bough, Black Coffee Review, Bluebird’s Scribe Review, Blue Collar Review, Bluestem, Cider Press Review, Columba, Cortland Review, Chariton Review, Eastern Iowa Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Frogmore Papers, Guesthouse, Heavy Feather Review, I-70 Review, Inquisitive Eater, MockingHeart Review, Pennine Platform, Pilgrimage, Pure Slush, Rootstalk, Seminary Ridge Review, Southword, the tiny journal, Turtle Island Review, Trollopiana and Wapsipinicon Almanac, among other venues. He has two books of poetry, Rural Routes, and Shorter and Sweeter, by Alexandria Quarterly Press.

Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), by Edvard Munch (Norway) 1933-1935