by Clive James
For a no-holds-barred mass fucking.
Brown females politely yawn while their admirers,
Having dished out Nature’s usual idea of passion
In less time than it takes to blow your nose,
Go back to being brown
Like the population of Rio after Mardi Gras.
You can’t leave out the dressing-up factor.
The chameleon, proceeding along a branch
Like the second act of The Family Reunion,
Reminds us of the bad year T. S. Eliot
Wore green powder on his face
When greeting guests for dinner.
The whole damned island is chock-a-block with shape-changers.
Have you noticed that sick parrot over there
Is wearing John Galliano’s face before last?
We should cut the poor bastard some slack.
Hitler, after all, started out as a dress designer
And never went near anti-Semitism
Until the critical failure
Of his first couture collection …
Don’t look now, but in the third fork from the top
Of the tree behind you is a lemur
Doing a fair imitation of Coco Chanel.
A bit too cute perhaps,
Like Audrey Tautou in the same role.
She’s coming down. She wants someone to pat her.
Bubbler
A lifetime onward, I know now the bubbler
In the school playground said things in my ear
As I soaked up the coolness with pursed lips.
“Bellerophon, framed by rejected Antea,
Has slain the Chimaera.”
I was too young to know these whispering
Refreshments were the classic voice of time
Drenching the world. But it got into me
Somehow, and when I wiped my mouth and chin
My lips were tingling with the urge to speak.
The bubblers, a generation later
Fed girls of Asian origin with the rush
Of ancient love-talk as they stood tiptoe,
Their cheeks awash. “The coolness of the night:
It penetrates my screen of sheer brushed silk
And chills my pillow, making cold the jade.”
Remember the brass guard to stop your kiss
Short of the dribbling bulb?
Yes, and I remember Aphrodite
Fresh from the bath, as the maths star Pam Yao Ming –
Who married an insurance man in Cabramatta –
Remembers the Shang Dynasty.
A Bracelet for Geoffrey Hill
A standard day’s haul from the burial mound:
Quartz cat’s eye cuff-links for a chain-mail shirt,
A Stalin button and an Iron Cross.
Small treasures liberated from their dirt.
Elsewhere in Mercia, a king prepared
For death took off his belt and doe-skin shoes,
Unzipped his lap-top, cleared security
And in the lounge sat back to watch the news
Until his flight was called. The galaxies
That showed up in the Hubble Deep Field frame
On long exposure shine like pick ’n’ mix
Sweets in their coloured shapes, no two the same.
Thus thrives the densely wrought. The cloth departs
And leaves the cinch more complex on its own:
An all-star inscape spinning precious wheels
In lattices of bronze, gold, pearl and bone.
Subrius Flavus, Tribune, last to die
When the plot to topple Nero came to naught,
Knelt by the grave that had been dug for him
And saw it was too shallow and too short.
Ne hoc quidem ex disciplina. So
He speaks in Tacitus. “No discipline
Even in this.” When stripping a Bren gun
Brush clean the butt-plate for the firing pin.
Coherent multiplicity takes force
For which the reader must be made to care
By how it sounds, or else it’s just white noise.
The symphony that lovely women wear
Next to the skin gains weight when taken off
And folded flat with tissues in between.
From tight arrangements we deduce the role
That each part plays, if not what it must mean.
We only know that here the heat contained
Speaks volumes about what was seen and felt
And still astonishes, more now than then –
Before the buckle came loose from the belt.
The word-lord, fresh in from America,
Lectures in Oxford. He knows everything.
Note-taking Helen shivers at the thought
She’ll be outlived by her engagement ring.
The Shadow Knows
See how the shadow of my former self
Moves through the kitchen, putting plates away.
The dishwasher yields up its treasure trove
Of future shards from long-ago today.
The blue-ringed soup bowls go home to their shelf.
I get home often now, as shadows are
Inclined to do, because they are so weak.
Now that my work is done, the peace I love
Is here for me, and you can hear me speak
More clearly now than I spoke from afar.
I am the shadow and the widower
Because the innocent you were I slew,
But you are here, and real, and far above
My level of attainment. It is you
Who brings me back to love what we once were.
Grief Has Its Time
“Grief has its time,” said Johnson, well aware
It was himself he spoke for. Others must
Be granted full rights to a long despair
Fuelled by the ruination of their trust
In a fair world. A child born deadly sick
Or vanished: psychic wounds that never heal
Ensure that wit, though it once more be quick,
Will not be merry. Pain too deep, too real.
Free of such burdens, I pursue my course
Supposing myself blessed with the light touch,
A blithesome ease my principal resource.
Sometimes on stage I even say as much,
Or did, till one night in the signing queue
An ancient lady touched my wrist and said
I’d made her smile the way he used to do
When hearts were won by how a young man read
Aloud, and decent girls were led astray
By sweet speech. “Can you put his name with mine?
Before the war, before he went away,
We used to read together.” Last in line
She had all my attention, so I wrote
The name she gave me, which I won’t write here,
And wondered how I’d come to strike the note
She’d clearly heard in poems that were mere
Performances beside the hurt she’d known:
Things written for my peace and my delight.
“Be certain, sir, we take a deeper tone
Than we believe. Enough now for tonight.”
Out in the street he spurned my proffered arm:
His cobbled features caught the link-boy’s flame.
“The love of God can get no lasting harm
From fear of death. The two things are the same.”
Yet all the way home he pursued the point
As if the argument about God’s will
Within him made him ache in every joint
Until he reached the truth and could be still.
Utmost concision, even in a rage;
Guarding the helpless from experiment;
Stalwart against the follies of the age;
The depth of subtlety made eloquent –
These were the qualities of Johnson’s mind
&nb
sp; Even the King felt bound to venerate,
Who entered through the library wall to find
The rumpled, mumbling sage, alone and great.
Vision of Jean Arthur and the Distant Mountains
Look back and you can almost pick the minute
When the last power and spring of youth withdrew,
And you began to walk, not run,
Searching ahead for places to sit down.
Really it’s been the one long day since then,
But gradually invaded by this peace
By which you are looked after. The light ebbs
As it does before the heavens open,
And the air fills with this strange comfort,
As if there were a soft and loving voice
Putting sweet emphasis on just one word
To mark the moment of your growing old.
Shane,
You can’t just stand there in the rain.
You’ll catch your death of cold.
The Light As It Grows Dark
The light as it grows dark holds all the verve
That you were ever thrilled or dazzled by,
But holds it folded thick, stacked in reserve.
More for your memory than for your eye
It brings back pictures that your every nerve
Once revelled in while scarcely caring why.
You care now. Time has come, and there will be
No light at all soon, so look hard at this:
Behold the concentrated panoply
Just here in this small garden’s emphasis
On colour drained of visibility.
In daylight, such wealth might be what you miss.
The flowers are growing dark, but they will live,
And so will you, at least a little while.
Good reason you should do your best to give
All your attention now. It’s not your style,
I’m well aware, to be contemplative:
The thought of chasing shadows makes you smile.
And yet I swear to you each figment had
Full meaning once. The images are here
That made your day when you would run half-mad
For too much good luck. Now they reappear
So fragmentarily you find it sad.
But really it’s all there, so have no fear:
The light as it grows dark has come for you
To comfort you. It is the sweet embrace
Of what your history was bound to do:
Close in, and in due time to take your place.
You can’t believe it, but it’s nothing new:
Your life has turned to look you in the face.
Plate Tectonics
In the Great Rift, the wildebeest wheel and run,
Spooked by a pride of lions which would kill,
In any thousand of them, only one
Or two were they to walk or just stand still.
They can’t see that, nor can we see the tide
Of land go slowly out on either side,
As Africa and Asia come apart
Inexorably like a broken heart.
We measure everything by our brief lives
And pity most a life cut shorter yet.
Granddaughters get smacked if they play with knives,
Or should be, to make sure they don’t forget.
So think the old folk, by their years made wise,
Believing what they’ve seen before their eyes,
And knowing what time is, and where it goes.
Deep on the ocean floor, the lava flows.
from Sentenced to Life
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.
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 for a 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.
