Collected Poems (1958-2015)

by Clive James

And head back up the cliff path. This for sure:

  Even the memories will be washed away,

  If not by waves, by rain, which I see fall,

  Drenching the flagstones and the garden wall.

  My double doors are largely glass. I stand

  Often to contemplate the neat back yard

  My elder daughter with her artist’s hand

  Designed for me. This winter was less hard

  Than its three predecessors were. The snow

  Failed to arrive this time, but rain, for me,

  Will also do to register time’s flow.

  The rain, the snow, the inexorable sea:

  I get the point. I’ll climb the stairs to bed,

  Perhaps to dream I’m somewhere else instead.

  All day tomorrow I have tests and scans,

  And everything that happens will be real.

  My blood might say I should make no more plans,

  And when it does so, that will be the deal.

  But until then I love to speak with you

  Each day we meet. Sometimes we even touch

  Across the sad gulf that I brought us to.

  Just for a time, so little means so much:

  More than I’m worth, I know, as I know how

  My death is something I must live with now.

  Elementary Sonnet

  Tired out from getting up and getting dressed

  I lie down for a while to get some rest,

  And so begins another day of not

  Achieving much except to dent the cot

  For just the depth appropriate to my weight –

  Which is no chasm, in my present state.

  By rights my feet should barely touch the floor

  And yet my legs are heavy metal. More

  And more I sit down to write less and less,

  Taking a half hour’s break from helplessness

  To craft a single stanza meant to give

  Thanks for the heartbeat which still lets me live:

  A consolation even now, so late –

  When soon my poor bed will be smooth and straight.

  Leçons de ténèbres

  But are they lessons, all these things I learn

  Through being so far gone in my decline?

  The wages of experience I earn

  Would service well a younger life than mine.

  I should have been more kind. It is my fate

  To find this out, but find it out too late.

  The mirror holds the ruins of my face

  Roughly together, thus reminding me

  I should have played it straight in every case,

  Not just when forced to. Far too casually

  I broke faith when it suited me, and here

  I am alone, and now the end is near.

  All of my life I put my labour first.

  I made my mark, but left no time between

  The things achieved, so, at my heedless worst,

  With no life, there was nothing I could mean.

  But now I have slowed down. I breathe the air

  As if there were not much more of it there

  And write these poems, which are funeral songs

  That have been taught to me by vanished time:

  Not only to enumerate my wrongs

  But to pay homage to the late sublime

  That comes with seeing how the years have brought

  A fitting end, if not the one I sought.

  Winter Plums

  Two winter plum trees grow beside my door.

  Throughout the cold months they had little pink

  Flowers all over them as if they wore

  Nightdresses, and their branches, black as ink

  By sunset, looked as if a Japanese

  Painter, while painting air, had painted these

  Two winter plum trees. Summer now at last

  Has warmed their leaves and all the blooms are gone.

  A year that I might not have had has passed.

  Bare branches are my signal to go on,

  But soon the brave flowers of the winter plums

  Will flare again, and I must take what comes:

  Two winter plum trees that will outlive me.

  Thriving with colour even in the snow,

  They’ll snatch a triumph from adversity.

  All right for them, but can the same be so

  For someone who, seeing their buds remade

  From nothing, will be less pleased than afraid?

  Spring Snow Dancer

  Snow into April. Frost night after night.

  Out on the Welsh farms the lambs die unborn.

  The chill air hurts my lungs, but from the light

  It could be spring. Bitter as it is bright,

  The last trick of the cold is a false dawn.

  I breathed, grew up, and now I learn to be

  Glad for my long life as it melts away,

  Yet still regales me with so much to see

  Of how we live in continuity

  And die in it. Take what I saw today:

  My granddaughter, as quick as I could glance,

  Did ballet steps across the kitchen floor,

  And this time I was breathless at the chance

  By which I’d lived to see our dear lamb dance –

  Though soon I will not see her any more.

  Mysterious Arrival of the Dew

  Tell me about the dew. Some say it falls

  But does it fall in fact? And if it fall

  Then where does it fall from? And why, in falling,

  Does it not obscure the moon?

  Dew on the hibiscus, dew on the cobweb,

  Dew on the broken leaf,

  The world’s supply of diamond earrings

  Tossed from a car window.

  Some intergalactic hoodlum sugar-daddy

  Is trying to get girls.

  Goethe had a name for these flattering droplets:

  Shiver-pearls. Grab a handful.

  Statistics say dew doesn’t fall at all:

  Going nowhere near the moon,

  It just gathers on any susceptible surface

  When the temperature is right.

  There is talk in every arid country

  Of collecting it by the truck-load,

  But the schemes get forgotten in the sun

  As soon as it sucks up those trillion baubles.

  Tell me about the dew. Is it a case

  Of falling back the better to advance,

  By the same veil, shawl or glittering pashmina

  As last time out? But darling, it’s to die for.

  Cabin Baggage

  My niece is heading here to stay with us.

  Before she leaves home she takes careful stock

  Of what she might not know again for years.

  The berries (so she writes) have been brought in,

  But she’ll be gone before the peaches come.

  On days of burning sun, the air is tinged

  With salt and eucalyptus. ‘Why am I

  Leaving all this behind? I feel a fool.’

  But I can tell from how she writes things down

  The distance will assist her memories

  To take full form. She travels to stay still.

  I wish I’d been that smart before I left.

  Instead, I have to dig deep for a trace

  Of how the beach was red hot underfoot,

  The green gold of the Christmas beetle’s wing.

  Transit Visa

  He had not thought that it would be his task

  To gauge the force of the oncoming wave

  Of night; to cast aside his jester’s mask,

  Guessing it was not Ali Baba’s cave

  That would engulf him, but an emptiness

  Devoid of treasure heaped to serve his dreams;

  His best hope, to be set free from distress.

  No guiding light, not even moonlight beams,

  Will lead him forward to find life refined
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  Into a fit reward or punishment:

  No soul can well continue when the mind

  Fades with the body. All his store is spent

  Of pride, or guilt, or anything that might

  Have steeled him for the non-stop outbound flight

  Were it to lead somewhere, but it does not.

  That much becomes clear as the sky grows dark.

  He hears the rattle of his childhood cot,

  The rain that fills the creek that floods the park:

  But these are memories. The way ahead

  Will send no messages that can be kept.

  One doesn’t even get to meet the dead.

  You planned to see the bed where Dido slept?

  No chance. It didn’t last the course. Back then

  They forged the myths that feed our poetry

  Not for our sake, but theirs, to soothe them when

  Life was so frightful that death had to be

  A better place, a holiday from fear.

  But now we know that paradise is here,

  As is the underworld. To no new dawn

  He gets him gone, nor yet a starry hour

  Of silence. He goes back to being born

  And then beyond that, though he feels the power

  Of all creation when he lifts a book,

  Or when a loved face smiles at his new joke,

  Which could well be his last: but now just look

  At how the air, before he turns to smoke,

  Is glowing in the window. If the glass

  Were brighter it would melt. That radiance

  Is not a way of saying this will pass:

  It says this will remain. No play of chance

  From now on includes you. The world you quit

  Is staying here, so say goodbye to it.

  Japanese Maple

  Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.

  So slow a fading out brings no real pain.

  Breath growing short

  Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain

  Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

  Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see

  So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls

  On that small tree

  And saturates your brick back-garden walls,

  So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

  Ever more lavish as the dusk descends

  This glistening illuminates the air.

  It never ends.

  Whenever the rain comes it will be there,

  Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

  My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.

  Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.

  What I must do

  Is live to see that. That will end the game

  For me, though life continues all the same:

  Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,

  A final flood of colours will live on

  As my mind dies,

  Burned by my vision of a world that shone

  So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

  Balcony Scene

  Old as the hills and riddled with ill health,

  I talk the talk but cannot walk the walk

  Save at the pace of drying paint. My wealth

  Of stamina is spent. Think of the hawk,

  Nailed to its perch by lack of strength, that learns

  To sing the lark’s song. What else can it do,

  While dreaming of the day its power returns?

  It is with all my heart I write to you.

  My heart alone is what it always was.

  The ultrasound shows nothing wrong with it,

  And if we smile at that, then it’s because

  We both know that its physical remit

  Was only half the task the poor thing faced.

  My heart had spiritual duties too,

  And failed at all of them. Worse than a waste

  Was how I hurt myself through hurting you.

  Or so he says, you think. I know your fear

  That my repentance comes too easily.

  But to discuss this, let me lure you here,

  To sit with me on my stone balcony.

  A hint of winter cools the air, but still

  It shines like summer. Here I can renew

  My wooing, as a cunning stranger will.

  His role reversed, your suitor waits for you.

  The maple tree, the autumn crocuses –

  They think it’s spring, and that their lives are long –

  Lend colour to the green and grey. This is

  A setting too fine for a life gone wrong.

  It needs your laughter. Let me do my best

  To earn that much, though you not find me true,

  Or good, or fair, or fit for any test.

  You think that I don’t know my debt to you?

  High overhead, a pair of swallows fly,

  Programmed for Africa, but just for now

  They seem sent solely to enchant the eye

  Here in this refuge I acquired somehow

  Beyond my merit. Now a sudden wave

  Of extra sunlight sharpens all the view.

  There is a man here you might care to save

  From too much solitude. He calls for you.

  Here two opposing forces will collide –

  Your proper anger and my shamed regret –

  With all the weight of justice on your side.

  But once we gladly spoke and still might yet.

  Come, then, and do not hesitate to say

  Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?

  Be wary, but don’t brush these words away,

  For they are all yours. I wrote this for you.

  Sunset Hails a Rising

  O lente, lente currite noctis equi!

  Marlowe, after Ovid

  La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée.

  Valéry

  Dying by inches, I can hear the sound

  Of all the fine words for the flow of things

  The poets and philosophers have used

  To mark the path into the killing ground.

  Perhaps their one aim was to give words wings,

  Or even just to keep themselves amused,

  With no thought that they might not be around

  To see the rising sun:

  But still they found a measure for our plight

  As we prepare to leave the world of men.

  Run slowly, slowly, horses of the night.

  The sea, the sea, always begun again.

  In English of due tact, the great lines gain

  More than they lose. The grandeur that they keep

  From being born in other tongues than ours

  Suggests we will have time to taste the rain

  As we are drawn into the dreamless sleep

  That lasts so long. No supernatural powers

  Need be invoked by us to help explain

  How we will see the world

  Dissolve into the mutability

  That feeds the future with our fading past:

  The sea, the always self-renewing sea.

  The horses of the night that run so fast.

  Selected Song Lyrics

  Prefatory Note

  This selection from the song lyrics I have written for the music of Pete Atkin adds up to less than half of the total in existence. I have left out all the love songs. (There was a time when that sentence would have started me writing another one.) Many of them I am quite proud of and I hope there is none without its turn of phrase. But they are all written within the courtly love tradition; and are thus mainly more about the loss of love than its acquisition; and so, without the music to help them sound universal, they give the exact effect of a single, lonely man crying repeatedly into his beer.

  Other strong candidates for exclusion were those lyrics, mainly from early on, which needed too much help to get started from phrases unwittingly lent by Ronsard, Nerval, Laforgue, Apolli
naire, Leopardi, Rilke, W. B. Yeats or T. S. Eliot. Some of the lyrics I have included do indeed contain literary allusions, but the allusions are not the driving force. When listened to, such anacreontic borrowings can add to the texture without insisting on separate notice. But on the page, if they come too thick and fast, they can look like a misplaced claim to erudition. In the nineteenth century, Thomas Moore, for the publication of his collected lyrics along with his poems, would unapologetically gloss his Latin and Greek borrowings with learned footnotes, to a total length that often exceeded that of the lyric itself. Still feeling obliged to prove his kinship with learned colleagues, he failed to realize that when his lyrics were sung in the salons, they silenced not only the audience but the competition. With the living laurels already his, he went on striving for the bronze simulacrum, never publishing even the slightest lyric about a shy damsel of Dublin without appending some supererogatory rigmarole about an intransigent priestess on the island of Hypnos. Today the practice would look absurd, not because the lyrical tradition is less robust but because it is much more so. If Dorothy Fields could draw a perfect lyric from what she heard on the sidewalk or in the subway, we can expect no points for flagging the help we got from Dante.

  As for the lyrics that have been included, the first criterion was that they should have enough poetic content to be of interest when read. But they would be true poems only if they could altogether do without their common organizing principle, which was music. Deprived of that, they are something else. I hope they are not something less, but some readers might decide they can be safely skipped. Other readers, however, might be encouraged to seek them out in recorded form. If that happened, I could give myself credit for a cunning plan.

  The Master of the Revels

  Allow me to present myself, my ladies

  And gentlemen of this exalted age

  Before my creatures take the stage

  For I am the Master of the Revels

  In what appertains to mirth I am a sage

  I work myself to death for each production

  And though the world’s great wits are all on file

  I have not been known to smile

  For I am the Master of the Revels