Sentenced to Life

by Clive James

  to Prue

  If you’re the dreamer, I’m your dream, but when

  You wish to wake I am your wish, and grow

  As mighty as all mastery, and then

  As silent as a star

  Ablaze above the city that we know

  As Time: so very strange, so very far.

  Contents

  Sentenced to Life

  Driftwood Houses

  Landfall

  Early to Bed

  My Home

  Holding Court

  Procedure for Disposal

  Manly Ferry

  Tempe Dump

  Living Doll

  Event Horizon

  Nature Programme

  Managing Anger

  Echo Point

  Too Much Light

  My Latest Fever

  The Emperor’s Last Words

  Compendium Catullianum

  Bugsy Siegel’s Flying Eye

  Only the Immortal Need Apply

  Plot Points

  One Elephant, Two Elephant

  Asma Unpacks Her Pretty Clothes

  Nina Kogan’s Geometrical Heaven

  Star System

  Change of Domicile

  Rounded with a Sleep

  Elementary Sonnet

  Leçons de ténèbres

  Winter Plums

  Spring Snow Dancer

  Mysterious Arrival of the Dew

  Cabin Baggage

  Transit Visa

  Japanese Maple

  Balcony Scene

  Sunset Hails a Rising

  A Note on the Text

  Sentenced to Life

  Sentenced to life, I sleep face-up as though

  Ice-bound, lest I should cough the night away,

  And when I walk the mile to town, I show

  The right technique for wading through deep clay.

  A sad man, sorrier than he can say.

  But surely not so guilty he should die

  Each day from knowing that his race is run:

  My sin was to be faithless. I would lie

  As if I could be true to everyone

  At once, and all the damage that was done

  Was in the name of love, or so I thought.

  I might have met my death believing this,

  But no, there was a lesson to be taught.

  Now, not just old, but ill, with much amiss,

  I see things with a whole new emphasis.

  My daughter’s garden has a goldfish pool

  With six fish, each a little finger long.

  I stand and watch them following their rule

  Of never touching, never going wrong:

  Trajectories as perfect as plain song.

  Once, I would not have noticed; nor have known

  The name for Japanese anemones,

  So pale, so frail. But now I catch the tone

  Of leaves. No birds can touch down in the trees

  Without my seeing them. I count the bees.

  Even my memories are clearly seen:

  Whence comes the answer if I’m told I must

  Be aching for my homeland. Had I been

  Dulled in the brain to match my lungs of dust

  There’d be no recollection I could trust.

  Yet I, despite my guilt, despite my grief,

  Watch the Pacific sunset, heaven sent,

  In glowing colours and in sharp relief,

  Painting the white clouds when the day is spent,

  As if it were my will and testament –

  As if my first impressions were my last,

  And time had only made them more defined,

  Now I am weak. The sky is overcast

  Here in the English autumn, but my mind

  Basks in the light I never left behind.

  Driftwood Houses

  The ne plus ultra of our lying down,

  Skeleton riders see the planet peeled

  Into their helmets by a knife of light.

  Just so, I stare into the racing field

  Of ice as I lie on my side and fight

  To cough up muck. This bumpy slide downhill

  Leads from my bed to where I’m bound to drown

  At this rate. I get up and take a walk,

  Lean on the balustrade and breathe my fill

  At last. The wooden stairs down to the hall

  Stop shaking. Enough said. To hear me talk

  You’d think I found my fate sad. Hardly that:

  All that has happened is I’ve hit the wall.

  Disintegration is appropriate,

  As once, on our French beach, I built, each year,

  Among the rocks below the esplanade,

  Houses from driftwood for our girls to roof

  With towels so they could hide there in the shade

  With ice creams that would melt more slowly. Proof

  That nothing built can be forever here

  Lay in the way those frail and crooked frames

  Were undone by a storm-enhanced high tide

  And vanished. It was time, and anyhow

  Our daughters were not short of other games

  Which were all theirs, and not geared to my pride.

  And here they come. They’re gathering shells again.

  And you in your straw hat, I see you now,

  As I lie restless yet most blessed of men.

  Landfall

  Hard to believe, now, that I once was free

  From pills in heaps, blood tests, X-rays and scans.

  No pipes or tubes. At perfect liberty,

  I stained my diary with travel plans.

  The ticket paid for at the other end,

  I packed a hold-all and went anywhere

  They asked me. One on whom you could depend

  To show up, I would cross the world by air

  And come down neatly in some crowded hall.

  I stood fora full hour to give my spiel.

  Here, I might talk back to a nuisance call,

  And that’s my flight of eloquence. Unreal:

  But those years in the clear, how real were they,

  When all the sirens in the signing queue

  Who clutched their hearts at what I had to say

  Were just dreams, even when the dream came true?

  I called it health but never stopped to think

  It might have been a kind of weightlessness,

  That footloose feeling always on the brink

  Of breakdown: the false freedom of excess.

  Rarely at home in those days, I’m home now,

  Where few will look at me with shining eyes.

  Perhaps none ever did, and that was how

  The fantasy of young strength that now dies

  Expressed itself. The face that smiled at mine

  Out of the looking glass was seeing things.

  Today I am restored by my decline

  And by the harsh awakening it brings.

  I was born weak and always have been weak.

  I came home and was taken into care.

  A cot-case, but at long last I can speak:

  I am here now, who was hardly even there.

  Early to Bed

  Old age is not my problem. Bad health, yes.

  If I were well again, I’d walk for miles,

  My name a synonym for tirelessness.

  On Friday nights I’d go out on the tiles:

  I’d go to tango joints and stand up straight

  While women leaned against me trustingly,

  I’d push them backward at a stately rate

  With steps of eloquence and intricacy.

  Alone in the café, my favourite place,

  I’d sit up late to carve a verse like this.

  I couldn’t do it at
my usual pace

  But weight of manner would add emphasis.

  The grand old man. Do I dare play that part?

  Perhaps I am too frail. I don’t know how

  To say exactly what is in my heart,

  Except I feel that I am nowhere now.

  But I have tempted providence too long:

  It gives me life enough, and little pain.

  I should be grateful for this simple song,

  No matter how it goes against the grain

  To spend the best part of a winter’s day

  Filing away at some reluctant rhyme

  And go to bed with so much still to say

  On how I came to have so little time.

  My Home

  Grasping at straws, I bless another day

  Of having felt not much less than all right.

  I wrote a paragraph and put some more

  Books in a box for books to throw away.

  Such were my deeds. Now, short of breath and sore

  From all that effort, I prepare for night,

  Which occupies the windows as I climb

  The stairs. A step up and I stand, each time,

  Posed like the statue of a man in pain,

  Although I’m really not: just weak and slow.

  This is the measure of my dying years:

  The sad skirl of a piper in the rain

  Who plays ‘My Home’. If I seem close to tears

  It’s for my sins, not sickness. Soon the snow

  Will finish readying the ground for spring.

  The cold, if not the warmth that it will bring,

  Is made, each day, so clearly manifest

  I thank my lucky stars for second sight.

  The children of our street head off for school

  Most mornings, stronger for their hours of rest.

  Plump in their coloured coats they prove a rule

  By moving brilliantly through soft white light:

  We fade away, but vivid in our eyes

  A world is born again that never dies.

  Holding Court

  Retreating from the world, all I can do

  Is build a new world, one demanding less

  Acute assessments. Too deaf to keep pace

  With conversation, I don’t try to guess

  At meanings, or unpack a stroke of wit,

  But just send silent signals with my face

  That claim I’ve not succumbed to loneliness

  And might be ready to come in on cue.

  People still turn towards me where I sit.

  I used to notice everything, and spoke

  A language full of details that I’d seen,

  And people were amused; but now I see

  Only a little way. What can they mean,

  My phrases? They come drifting like the mist

  I look through if someone appears to be

  Smiling in my direction. Have they been?

  This was the time when I most liked to smoke.

  My watch-band feels too loose around my wrist.

  My body, sensitive in every way

  Save one, can still proceed from chair to chair,

  But in my mind the fires are dying fast.

  Breathe through a scarf. Steer clear of the cold air.

  Think less of love and all that you have lost.

  You have no future so forget the past.

  Let this be no occasion for despair.

  Cherish the prison of your waning day.

  Remember liberty, and what it cost.

  Be pleased that things are simple now, at least,

  As certitude succeeds bewilderment.

  The storm blew out and this is the dead calm.

  The pain is going where the passion went.

  Few things will move you now to lose your head

  And you can cause, or be caused, little harm.

  Tonight you leave your audience content:

  You were the ghost they wanted at the feast,

  Though none of them recalls a word you said.

  Procedure for Disposal

  It may not come to this, but if I should

  Fail to survive this year of feebleness

  Which irks me so and may have killed for good

  Whatever gift I had for quick success –

  For I could talk an hour alone on stage

  And mostly make it up along the way,

  But now when I compose a single page

  Of double-spaced it takes me half the day –

  If I, that is, should finally succumb

  To these infirmities I’m slow to learn

  The names of lest my brain be rendered numb

  With boredom even as I toss and turn,

  Then send my ashes home, where they can fall

  In their own sweet time from the harbour wall.

  Manly Ferry

  Too frail to fly, I may not see again

  The harbour that I crossed on the South Steyne

  When I was still in short pants. All the boys

  Would gather at the rail that ran around

  The open engine-room. The oil, the noise

  Of rocking beams and plunging rods: it beat

  Even the view out from the hurdling deck

  Into the ocean. The machinery

  Was so alive, so beautiful, so neat.

  Years later the old ferries disappeared,

  Except for the South Steyne, which looked intact

  Where she was parked at Pyrmont, though a fire

  Had gutted her. I loved her two-faced grace:

  Twin funnels, and each end of her a prow,

  She sailed into a mirror and back out,

  Even while dead inside and standing still:

  Her livery of green and gold wore well

  Through years of weather as she went nowhere

  Except on that long voyage in my mind

  Where complicated workings clicked and throbbed

  And everything moved forward at full strength.

  And then, while I was elsewhere, she was gone:

  And now I, too, await my vanishing,

  Which, unlike hers, will be for good. She went

  Away to be refitted. In her new

  Career as a floating restaurant

  She seems set for as long as oysters grow

  With chilled white Cloudy Bay to wash them down:

  A brilliant inner city ornament.

  But is it better to be always there

  Than out of it, and just a fading name?

  For me, her life was when the engine turned.

  Soon now my path across the swell will end.

  If I can’t work, let me be broken up.

  Tempe Dump

  I always thought the showdown would be sudden,

  Convulsive as a bushfire triple-jumping

  A roadway where some idiot Green council

  Had forbidden the felling of gum trees,

  And so, with no firebreaks to check its course,

  The fire rides on like the army of Attila

  To look for houses where the English Garden

  Is banned, and there is only the Australian garden,

  With eucalypts that overhang the eaves

  And shed bark to ensure the racing flames

  Will send the place up like a napalm strike.

  Instead, it’s Tempe Dump. When we were small

  My gang went there exploring. Piston rings

  Lay round in heaps, shiny among the junk

  Which didn’t shine at all, just gave forth wisps

  Of smoke. The dump was smouldering underneath

  But had no end in view. This is the fire

  Within me, though I harbour noble thoughts

  Of forests under phosphorous attack

  And in an hour left black, in fields of ash –

  Not this long meltdown with its leaking heat,

  Its drips of acid, pools of alkali:

  This slow burn of what should be finished with />
  But waits for the clean sweep that never comes.

  Living Doll

  An Aufstehpuppe is a stand-up guy.

  You knock him over, he gets up again:

  Constantly smiling, never asking why

  The world went sideways for a while back then.

  I have an Aufstehpuppe on the shelf

  Under the mirror in my living room:

  I wish I were reminded of myself

  Merrily dipping in and out of doom.

  The truth, alas, is I’ve been knocked askew

  For quite a while now and I can’t get back

  To find the easy balance I once knew.

  Until the day when everything goes black

  I’ll spend more time than he does on my side

  Wishing the sparkle of his painted eyes

  Was shared by mine. I envy him his pride:

  That simple strength he seems to realise.

  My Aufstehpuppe was a crude antique

  When first I met him. Soon he might descend

  Further into our family, there to speak

  Of how we are defeated in the end,

  But still begin again in the new lives

  Which sort our junk, deciding what to keep.

  Let them keep this, a cheap doll that contrives

  To stand straight even as I fall asleep.

  Event Horizon

  For years we fooled ourselves. Now we can tell

  How everyone our age heads for the brink

  Where they are drawn into the unplumbed well,

  Not to be seen again. How sad, to think

  People we once loved will be with us there

  And we not touch them, for it is nowhere.

  Never to taste again her pretty mouth!

  It’s been forever, though, since last we kissed.

  Shadows evaporate as they go south,

  Torn, by whatever longings still persist,

  Into a tattered wisp, a streak of air,

  And then not even that. They get nowhere.

  But once inside, you will have no regrets.

  You go where no one will remember you.

  You go below the sun when the sun sets,

  And there is nobody you ever knew

  Still visible, nor even the most rare

  Hint of a face to humanise nowhere.

  Are you to welcome this? It welcomes you.

  The only blessing of the void to come

  Is that you can relax. Nothing to do,

  No cruel dreams of subtracting from your sum

  Of follies. About those, at last, you care:

  But soon you need not, as you go nowhere.