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| Callum Innes Exposed Painting - Paynes Grey / Yellow Oxide / Red Oxide on White 1999 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Stan Douglas Abstract Composition 1998 chromogenic print Tate Gallery |
This Time
Many things I seem to have done backward
as a child I wanted to be older
now I am trying to remember why
and what it was like to have to pretend
day after day I saw places that I
did not recognize until later on
when nothing was left of them any more
there were meetings and partings that passed me
at the time like train windows with the days
slipping across them and long afterward
the moment and sense of them came to me
burning there were faces I knew for years
and the nearness of them began only
when they were missing and there were seasons
of anguish I recalled with affection
joys lost unnoticed and searched for later
with no sign to show where they had last been
there with me and there was love which is thought
to be a thing of youth and I found it
I was sure that was what it was as I
came to it again and again sometimes
without knowing it sometimes insisting
vainly upon the name but I came to
the best of it last and though it may be
shorter this way I am glad it is so
it would have been too brief at any time
and so much of what I had found early
had been lost as I made my way to this
which is what I was to know afterward
– W.S. Merwin (1998)
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| Peter Doig Echo Lake 1998 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Richard Hamilton The Marriage 1998 digital print Tate Gallery |
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| Gary Hume Yellow Hair 1998 screenprint Tate Gallery |
The Deer in the Thicket
I'm sick of claiming
comfort in small things.
The gull, for example,
in the flying cold,
its black eyes
fixed on the sea,
or the hillside
in the wildflower summer.
When the deer enters
the clearing I'm tired
of using it as evidence.
It's beautiful, familiar,
and it stands at the edge
where it has always stood.
Then it's gone
into the thickets
and I listen.
Meanwhile, the room
of gods
is a loud room,
full of smoke and tables.
Everyone shouts to be heard.
– Frank Huyler (1998)
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| Gary Hume Francis Bacon 1998 screenprint Tate Gallery |
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| Richard Patterson Painted Minotaur 1996-97 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Stephen McKenna Three Baskets 1995 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
A Night Fragrance
Now I am old enough to remember
people speaking of immortality
as though it were something known to exist
a tangible substance that might be acquired
to be used perhaps in the kitchen
every day in whatever was made there
forever after and they applied the word
to literature and the names of things
names of persons and the naming of other
things for them and no doubt they repeated
that word with some element of belief
when they named a genus of somewhat more than
a hundred species of tropical trees and shrubs
some with flowers most fragrant at night
for James Theodore Tabernaemontanus
of Heidelberg physician and botanist
highly regarded in his day over
four centuries ago immortality
might be like that with the scattered species
continuing their various evolutions
the flowers opening by day or night
with no knowledge of bearing a name
of anyone and their fragrance if it
reminds at all not reminding of him
– W.S. Merwin (1995)
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| Uta Barth (no title) 1995-97 lithograph Tate Gallery |
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| Uta Barth (no title) 1995-97 lithograph Tate Gallery |
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| Uta Barth (no title) 1995-97 lithograph Tate Gallery |
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| Uta Barth (no title) 1995-97 lithograph Tate Gallery |
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| Uta Barth Field #20 1997 digital print with acrylic paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Gerhard Richter Abstract Painting (726) 1990 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
from Memories of My Father
Can a father give his son
what he himself does not possess,
or lacks the courage to wish up from his own deprivation?
Unlike the boy, who will turn into the father,
and unlike the father, who will turn into no one,
the pebble on the windowsill does not wrinkle, does not die,
though one day it will get lost,
or be thrown out,
maybe by the father the boy who stuck it in his pocket in the first place becomes,
when he forgets what it was he wanted the pebble to remember.
– Galway Kinnell (1990)
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)