by Clive James
And mastery demands a certain style
In my office hang the blueprints
Of the first exploding handshake
And the charted trajectories of custard pies
For Harlequin ten different kinds of heartbreak
For Columbine the colour of her eyes
Some other windows darken in the evening
And never before morning show a light
But for me there is no night
For I am the Master of the Revels
The caller-up and caster-in of devils
And I am here for your instruction and delight
The Ice-cream Man
This afternoon the ice-cream man
Has driven his magnetic van
From Angkor Wat or Isfahan
To park down by the meadows
The captain of a pirate ship
He struggles hard to keep his grip
With cannonades of strawberry whip
Delivered through the windows
A battered Bedford Dormobile
Done over pink for eye appeal
With rainbow discs on every wheel
It makes a magic wagon
A mass of metal glorified
Sesame thrown open wide
And this amazing man inside
Fantastic as a dragon
It must be standing on tiptoe
And reaching up to trade your dough
For scoops of technicolor snow
That makes the man look royal
To me he looks a normal bloke
With a second line in lukewarm Coke
Busting for a decent smoke
To break the round of toil
I guess I’ve got a jaundiced eye
The children never spot the lie
They’re queueing up and reaching high
For something that tastes lovely
Neapolitan wafers make the day
The king is in his castle gay
And they’re behind him all the way
Below me they’re above me
Who’d guess from how they make a meal
With darting tongue and teeth of steel
From a mess of frigid cochineal
That they were born to sorrow
Gone to dust the age of kings
Lost the taste for simple things
If only time would give me wings
I’d double back tomorrow
Stranger in Town
I never will remember how that stranger came to town
He walked in without a swagger, got a job and settled down
The place would have seemed the same without him
And now I can’t recall a thing about him
He didn’t wear a poncho or a gun with a filed sight
And he wasn’t passing through like a freight train in the night
He rarely wore a Stetson with a shadowy big brim
And I still can’t be sure if he was him
From Kansas to Wyoming, from Contention to Cheyenne
His name meant less than nothing and it didn’t scare a man
So folks didn’t worship him or fear him
And I can’t remember ever going near him
He didn’t tote a shotgun with the barrels both sawn off
So people didn’t hit the deck or dive behind a trough
He walked the street in silence, ignored on every side
And it’s doubtful if he could even ride
I never could remember how that stranger met his death
He was absolutely senile and with his dying breath
He forgot to ask his womenfolk to kiss him
And afterwards they didn’t even miss him
Nothing Left to Say
The breakers from the sea that kept me sane
Were clean and lucid all along the line
Like shavings tumbled upward from the plane
That leave with ease the surface of the pine
When the carpenter is planing with the grain
It’s nothing
Nothing but a dream of mine
And I have come to nothing in a way
That leaves me with nothing left to say
Half a lifetime bending with the breeze
To buy the stuff I don’t know how to use
A deck of credit cards, a bunch of keys
A station I achieved but didn’t choose
The screws are on and no one beats the squeeze
It’s nothing
Nothing I can’t bear to lose
And I have come to nothing in a way
That leaves me with nothing left to say
The sea I dreamed of closes like a vice
Parading waves are frozen into place
Their veils of vapour scattering like rice
And far below, the ultimate disgrace
A mermaid crushed to death inside the ice
It’s nothing
Nothing but a frightened face
And I have come to nothing in a way
That leaves me with nothing left to say
National Steel
Shining in the window a guitar that wasn’t wood
Was looking like a silver coin from when they still were good
The man who kept the music shop was pleased to let me play
Although the price was twenty times what I could ever pay
Pick it up and feel the weight and weigh the feel
That thing is an authentic National Steel
A lacy grille across the front and etchings on the back
But the welding sealed a box not even Bukka White could crack
I tuned it to an open chord, picked up the nickel slide
And bottlenecked a blues that sounded cold yet seemed to glide
The National Steel weaves a singing shroud
Just as sure as men in winter breathe a cloud
Scrapper Blackwell, Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Blake
Son House or any name you care to take
And from many a sad railroad, mine or mill
Lonnie Johnson’s bitter tears are in there still
Be certain, said the man, of who you are
There are dead men still alive in that guitar
Back there the next morning half demented by desire
For that storybook assemblage of heavy plate and wire
I sold half the things I valued but I’ll never count the cost
While I can pick a note like broken bracken in the frost
And I hear those fabled names becoming real
Every time I feel the weight or weigh the feel
Of the vanished years inside my National Steel
I See the Joker
Mornings now I breakfast in the tower
Then travel thirty floors to the garage
My sons are with me even underground
With nothing but our gun-cars all around
From anything but nuclear attack
That place is safe, but when I cut the pack I see the Joker
I cut the pack and see the Joker
The forecourt is crawling with our boys
A heavy weapon rides in every car
My Cadillac’s a safe-deposit box
With plastic armour in the top and sides
Solid like a strongroom in Fort Knox
And all along the parkway into town
We’re covered for a mile front and back
By Family cars, but when I cut the pack I see the Joker
I cut the pack and see the Joker
Who is this guy and why does he want me?
This city has been ours since Christ knows when
At first from booze and girls and junk, and then
Legitimate, from rents and industry
The Chief of Police is ours to buy and sell
The DA and the Mayor are ours as well
There’s no one left to fight, the enemy
Are dead and gone, or just some juicehead black
Loose with a knif
e, but when I cut the pack I see the Joker
I cut the pack and see the Joker
The cops are checking each incoming flight
For solo hitmen with an urge to die
No one gets in here by day or night
Without I don’t know who they are and why
I’m in the clear, at barely fifty-five
One of the most respected men alive
Some blubber here and there, but nothing slack
I’m right on top, but when I cut the pack I see the Joker
I cut the pack and see the Joker
We do the journey different every day
Today we hit the garment district first
Then double back and take the boulevard
And as we drive I don’t know which is worst
To know he’ll come but not to know the way
To know he’ll make a play but not know how
Is he somewhere out there setting up the gun?
Is this headache from his crosshairs on my brow?
There’s no way, not a crevice, not a crack
That he can reach me, but when I cut the pack I see the Joker
I cut the pack and see the Joker
Sessionman’s Blues
I’ve got the sessionman’s blues
I played on three albums today
I paid a sessionman’s dues
I played what they told me to play
Then I climbed in my Rover three-litre and motored away
I’ve got the sessionman’s blues
The squattin’ in a booth alone blues
I’ve got the sessionman’s blues
But I get the dots right from the start
I drink a sessionman’s booze
But my tenor blows what’s on the chart
A single run through and I’ve got the whole solo by heart
I’ve got the sessionman’s blues
The squattin’ in a booth alone
Isolated microphone blues
I’ve got the sessionman’s blues
I’m booked up a lifetime ahead
I get a sessionman’s news
The voice on the blower just said
They want me to work on the afternoon after I’m dead
I’ve got the sessionman’s blues
The squattin’ in a booth alone
Isolated microphone
Doublin’ on baritone blues
My Egoist
The garden was in bloom, my egoist
The light was right, the show was very brave
You simply had to shy your hat away and rave
Because the colours looked so gay
The garden was your home, my egoist
You grew blasé, you asked ‘What else is new?’
Or perhaps it crushed your spirit, it was all for you
And the surroundings were too plush
The garden felt your loss, my egoist
And what it gained were others not your kind
At first the heavy-handed came and finally the blind
Until nothing looked the same
The garden is alone, my egoist
They’ve all flown on, the butterflies of day
And nothing now takes flight above this sad display
Except the butterflies of night
Song for Rita
A tribute to Kris Kristofferson
The way my arms around you touch the centre of my being
As I step inside the marshland of your mind
Makes me weak inside my senses like a dog hit by a diesel
And more alone than Milton goin’ blind
And I know I need to lose you if I ever want to find you
’Cause the poet’s way is finished from the start
And I feel a palpitation kinda flutter in my forehead
As I think the problem over in my heart
Yes I guess I’ll always never know the question to your answer
If I can’t be doin’ wrong by feelin’ right
But I’m really lookin’ forward to how you’ll be lookin’ backward
When I’m walkin’ with you sideways through the night
I can keep this kind of writin’ goin’ more or less forever
But I can’t undo destruction when it’s gone
I can only think of you and what you cost me in hotel bills
As I settle down to dream of movin’ on
If I’ve never longed to love you less than now you’ll know the reason
Is because my whole desire is to sing
And everything I’m sayin’ is the mirror of your beauty
As it hovers like a vulture on the wing
Yes I guess I’ll always never know the question to your answer
If I can’t be doin’ wrong by feelin’ right
But I’m really lookin’ forward to how you’ll be lookin’ backward
When I’m walkin’ with you sideways through the night
Senior Citizens
You’ve seen the way they get around
With nothing beyond burdens left to lose
The drying spine that bends them near the ground
The way their ankles fold over their shoes
They’ve had their day and half of the day after
And all the shares they ever held in laughter
Are now just so many old engravings
Their sands have run out long before their savings
And the fun ran out so long before the sands
They’ve lost touch with the touch of other hands
That once came to caress and then to help
A single tumble means a broken hip
The hair grows thinner on the scalp
And thicker on the upper lip
And who is there to care, or left to please?
It’s so easy when we’re young
For me to wield a silver tongue
And cleverly place you among
The girls the boys have always sung
It’s so simple when it’s you
For me to coax from my guitar
The usual on how fine you are
Like this calm night, like that bright star
And the rest would follow on
The rest would follow on
And there’ll be time to try it all
I’m sure the thrill will never pall
The sand will take so long to fall
The neck so slim, the glass so tall
Shadow and the Widower
As we left each other on our final night
And I walked away with all the love remaining
A classic whisper near the station wall
I could just hear without straining
Asked if I was scared to realize this was all
Disappointed there was only this much in it
The perfume and suppliance of a minute?
It was him – the Shadow and the Widower
There’s that all right, I said, and so much more
An hour of life inside a world of dying
A wider limit set to one’s regard
The kinder forms of lying
And beyond all that the privilege of a memory scarred
In prettier ways than most, perhaps than any
Such a fate must seem desirable to many
Even you, the Shadow and the Widower
The classic laughter echoed near the wall
A strip torn from a three-sheet stirred and fluttered
The whisper said, Well don’t that just beat all
What this oracle hath uttered?
A straight-up scalp-collector I could understand
All those lineaments of gratified desire
But he’s handing me that old refining fire
This to me, the Shadow and the Widower
The whisper moved with me into the light
Where the access tunnel ran beneath the tracks
The wind searched for a way back to the night
But no romance, no lonely alto
sax
Just litter and the notes left for the blacks
The graffiti stopped your pulse like heart attacks
To perdition with that rarefied regret
Those half-remembered ladies swathed in yearning
Said the whisper just an inch behind my head
The world is burning
And the tales of love fit for the guiltless dead
Will have little in them of the airs and graces
With which your tender soul goes through its paces
Commit that to your fragrant memory
And while you’re doing that, remember me
The Shadow and the Widower
Payday Evening
Of late I try to kill my payday evenings
In many an unrecommended spot
Curiosity accounting for a little
Loneliness accounting for a lot
The girls who pull the handles force their laughter
The casual conversation’s not the best
Indifference accounting for a little
Unhappiness accounting for the rest
And the gardens of the heyday in Versailles
And Pompadour’s theatre in the stairs
Should be created in my magic eye
From a jukebox and a stack of canvas chairs
But somehow we have failed to come through
The styles are gone to seed, no more parades
There seems to be no talk of me and you
No breath of scandal in these sad arcades
Concerning us there are no fables
No brilliant poems airily discarded
Just liquid circles on Formica tables
A silence perhaps too closely guarded
Outside a junkie tries to sell his girl
Her face has just begun to come apart
Look hard and you can see the edges curl
Speed has got her beaten at the start
