The Horse’s Mouth (1958) Alec Guiness adapted Joyce Cary’s novel into a screenplay so that he could play the irascible artist Gulley Johnson, who cannot pass up a wall without painting on it images of the disenfranchised working class. John Bratby, one of the ‘Kitchen Sink’ school of artists, did all the paintings that director Roland Neame captured in brilliant Technicolor, with the whimsical music of Prokofieff’s “Lieutenant Kije” suite in the background.
They built a wall in China
To keep the nomads out,
But tribes from Asia Minor
Descended in a rout.
The Vatican in Rome
Raised walls around its city
Preserving catacombs
From marauding royalty.
They built a wall in Berlin
To divide East from West,
Where, bullets whizzing in,
Graffiti sprayed its protest.
Down New York subway tunnels
Riots of colors splash
Homeless funnels
Of dispossessed backlash.
Outside El Paso, Texas,
To keep the borders manned,
They poured a cement mass
Where once a river ran.
Russia’s passing laws
To police the internet,
As America withdraws
Its torch from migrants.
Now London has its Brexit
For Banski to defame.
Though most graffiti artists
Strike without a name.
[Disposable Poem November 22, 2016]
Dr. Mike
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