by Clive James
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 slo
w 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.
Into the singularity we fly
After a stretch of time in which we leave
Our lives behind yet know that we will die
At any moment now. A pause to grieve,
Burned by the starlight of our lives laid bare,
And then no sound, no sight, no thought. Nowhere.
What is it worth, then, this insane last phase
When everything about you goes downhill?
This much: you get to see the cosmos blaze
And feel its grandeur, even against your will,
As it reminds you, just by being there,
That it is here we live or else nowhere.
Nature Programme
The female panda is on heat
For about five minutes a year
And the male, no sprinter at the best of times,
Hardly ever gets there
Before she cools off again.
In the South Island of New Zealand
There is a rainforest
With penguins in it.
They trot along the dangerous trails
Towards the booming ocean
Where albatross chicks in training
For their very first take-off
Are snatched by tiger sharks
Cruising in water
No deeper than your thighs.
Doomed to the atrophy of lust,
Lurching with their flippers out,
Dragged under as they strain for flight,
They could be you:
Wonder of nature that you were.
Managing Anger
On screen, the actor smashes down the phone.
He wrecks the thing because he can’t get through.
He plays it stagey even when alone.
If you were there, he might be wrecking you.
Actors believe they have to show, not tell,
Any annoyance that the script dictates,
Therefore it’s not enough for them to yell:
They must pull down a cupboard full of plates.
An actor wrecks a room. The actress who
Is playing wife to him does not protest.
Perhaps she doesn’t have enough to do
All day, and thinks his outburst for the best.
For God forbid that actors bottle up
Their subterranean feelings so that we
Can’t see them. We must watch the coffee cup
Reduced to smithereens, the shelf swept free
Of all its crockery. Another take
Requires the whole set to be dressed again
With all the gubbins that he got to break
The first time. Aren’t they weary, now and then,
The poor crew, setting up the stuff once more
That some big baby trashes in a rage,
And all that fury faked? False to the core,
The screen experience gives us a gauge
For our real lives, where we go on for years
Not even mentioning some simple fact
That brings us to the aching point of tears –
Lest people think that it might be an act.
Echo Point
I am the echo of the man you knew.
Launched from the look-out to the other side
Of this blue valley, my voice calls to you
All on its own, and more direct for that.
My line of sweet talk you could not abide
Came from the real man. It will all be gone –
Like glitter back to the magician’s hat –
Soon now, and only sad scraps will remain.
His body that betrayed you has gone on
To do the same for him. Like veils of rain,
He is the cloud that his tears travel through.
When the cloud lifts, he will be gone indeed.
Hearing his cry, you’ll see the ghost gums break
Into clear air, as all the past is freed
From false hopes. No, I nowhere lie awake
To feel this happen, but I know it will.
At the last breath, my throat was full of song;
The proof, for a short while, is with you still.
Though snapped at sharply by the whipbird’s call,
It has not stopped. It lingers for your sake:
Almost as if I were not gone for long –
And what you hear will not fade as I fall.
Too Much Light
My cataracts invest the bright spring day
With extra glory, with a glow that stings.
The shimmering shields above the college gates –
Heraldic remnants of the queens and kings –
Flaunt liquid paint here at the end of things
When my vitality at last abates,
And all these forms bleed, spread and make a blur
Of what, to second sight, they are and were.
And now I slowly pace, a stricken beast,
Across a lawn which must be half immersed
In crocuses and daffodils, but I
Can only see for sure the colours burst
And coalesce as if they were the first
Flowers I ever saw. Thus, should I die,
I’ll go back through the gate I entered when
My eyes were stunned, as now they are again.
My latest fever clad me in cold sweat
And there I was, in hospital again,
Drenched, and expecting an attack of bugs
As devastating as the first few hours
Of Barbarossa, with the Russian air force
Caught on the ground and soldiers by the thousand
Herded away to starve, while Stalin still
Believed it couldn’t happen. But instead
The assault turned out to be as deadly dull
As a bunch of ancient members of the Garrick
Emerging from their hutch below the stairs
To bore me from all angles as I prayed
For sleep, which only came in fits and starts.
Night after night was like that. Every day
Was like the night before, a hit parade
Of jazzed-up sequences from action movies.
While liquid drugs were pumped into my wrist,
My temperature stayed sky-high. On the screen
Deep in my head, heroes repaired themselves.
In Rambo First Blood, Sly Stallone sewed up
His own arm. Then Mark Wahlberg, star of Shooter,
Assisted by Kate Mara, operated
To dig the bullets from his body. Teeth
Were gritted in both cases. No one grits
Like Sly: it looks like a piano sneering.
Better, however, to be proof against
All damage, as in Salt, where Angelina
Jumps from a bridge onto a speeding truck
And then from that truck to another truck.
In North Korea, tortured for years on end,
She comes out with a split lip. All this mayhem
Raged in my brain with not a cliché scamped.
I saw the heroes march in line towards me
In slo-mo, with a wall of flame behind them,
And thought, as I have often thought, ‘This is
The pits. How can I make it stop?’ It stopped.
On the eleventh day, my temperature
Dived off the bridge like Catherine Zeta-Jones
From the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.
I had no vision of the final battle.
The drugs, in pill form now, drove back the bugs
