George Barker, by Patrick Swift (1927-83), Oil, 1958 (London)
(poor quality reproduction)


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In 1958, I had the privilege of painting George Barker’s portrait.
It is the emanation that is the real subject of the painting. This can only be painted via the concrete, the aim is to make it concrete, exclude time and expression because expression introduces the notion of time.
I believe in the theory of emanations though perhaps in a different modified form since I do not deny this capacity to the inanimate object... It is intuitive activity. To get a likeness which does not depend on facial expression is the aim. But there is a very sad moment when we can no longer refer for one’s revisions to the subject, the equation has assumed its own life. I hadn’t in fact painted a human being for a year. I had painted trees in the countryside which also have their emanations. I have made no use of the knowledge which the privilege of friendship necessarily brings, that is not conscious use. These being merely notes on what is in the poetry. In the man a great generosity of spirit.
- Swift in his notebook (Gandon Editions, 1993)

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For Patrick Swift
by George Barker

Patrick Swift, for whom I write
these long delayed lines in a night
given over to bad dreams and broken
images, I tender these words as token
to your green memory, if speech
like a homing pigeon can reach
you in the lightning shrouded, stark
and at last backyard of the dark.
I think it may, for there's a sense
in which the lost intelligence
illuminates and visits spheres
it neither knows, believes or hears
but like a bird tied at a stake
feels a flight it cannot make.
And so into six feet of ground
I have descended, and have found
and silently addressed the bone
that in turn speaks to my own.
Can you, Swift, like a flint spark
rise up from the gravelled dark
illuminating the vacuity
of non-existent eternity?
(The whistling whispering Swift would
if any could, if any could.)
I saw and heard his word walk over
water and wilderness, and uncover
mysteries that had long laid hid
under the spiritual pyramid.
I heard him charm the magical snake
down from its branch, and saw him take
ideals by the hand, and show
them how to peacock to and fro.
"The theology of the object: this
animates everything that is."
The brush that he held in his hand
sign and symbol, instrument and
artillery of his graphic will
performed, against all odds, as well
as that bright goldfishing diver
his tongue: both fished from the river
secrets only nature seemed
to know or the King Fisher dreamed.
The Dawn comes up as I write this
and in its own way this verse is
to thank Ireland for her gift
to us of the painter Patrick Swift:
for Kavanagh's honesty, Yeats
for the great images he creates,
for Synge. For MacNeice, for Joyce,
for Sam Beckett and all the warty boys
yes, let some decent praise be sung
and for Swift, the Golden Tongue.