The Walk
Oil on Canvas, 28 x 32 ins. 1990
During the winter of 1990, in an attempt to calm his mind Bryan Charnley set off to walk from Bedford to Cambridge. During the walk his shoes came apart and he threw them away and continued to walk bare foot through the night. To do this turned out to be disastrous, something that he refers to in the Apocalyptic “Ein Poem”
….The hard road has cut his feet to shreds
He longs for a cigarette and a warm bed
“Tokyo Rose, Tokyo Rose
Do you know how deep it goes
To sell your soul for a bowel of pills
Because you are too light to kill”
Ein mutters to himself on his bed
As he drifts off to sleep
Certain of damnation deep
And the birth of the iron peace.
In the Winter sunshine
Sitting outside the hospital
Where they bandaged his feet
And smoking a cigarette so sweet
Ein is suddenly enfolded by an icy wind
Which curls round the corner to meet
His latent fear
A nurse standing near
Says testily that it is the worse
Wind she has ever known….