The Portrait.

The large portrait dominated the first floor of the Auckland central library for a while. I would see a middle-aged youthful man wearing a tweed jacket, tie, warm clothes, pipe in hand looking at a slight angle. The man in the painting seemed to survey what was going on in the quiet collection room. This man could have been a farmer or a clerk, I thought, but for the intense gaze of someone who has read all the books on the shelf. In fact, he had been a relief worker on Depression roads, later a lecturer at Auckland University and Elam. He looked inquiring,and personable to me and had already written 'To a Friend in the Wilderness'. He was the country's startling outsider poet, A.R.D.Fairburn, but one vacant morning his oils likeness was gone. - 24 October,2018.