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| Ken Kiff Triptych: Shadows 1983-86 acrylic paint, oil paint and pastel on board Tate Gallery |
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| George Warner Allen The Return from Cythera 1985-86 oil paint and tempera on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Gillian Ayres Antony and Cleopatra 1982 oil paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Derrick Greaves Falling I 1984-85, 1992-93 oil paint and acrylic paint and paper on canvas Tate Gallery |
Yesterday
My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand
he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know
he says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my father
he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me
oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father's hand the last time
he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk to me
oh yes I say
but if you are busy he said
I don't want you to feel that you
have to
just because I'm here
I say nothing
he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I don't want to keep you
I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know
though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do
– W.S. Merwin, from Opening the Hand (Atheneum, 1983)
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| Anselm Kiefer Urd, Verdandi, Skuld (The Norns) 1983 oil paint, shellac, emulsion and fibre on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Anselm Kiefer Palette 1981 oil paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Bridget Riley Achæan 1981 oil paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| John McLean Opening 1987 acrylic paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| R.B. Kitaj Cecil Court, London, W.C. 2 (The Refugees) 1983-84 oil paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| R.B. Kitaj The Wedding 1989-93 oil paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Howard Hodgkin Rain 1984-89 oil paint on panel Tate Gallery |
Berryman
I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war
don't lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you're older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity
just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice
he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally
it was in the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop
he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England
as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry
he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how you can ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write
– W.S. Merwin, from Opening the Hand (Atheneum, 1983)
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| John Hoyland Gadal 10.11.86 1986 acrylic paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Rita Donagh Counterpane 1987-88 oil paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Georg Baselitz Folkdance Melancholia 1989 oil paint on canvas Tate Gallery |