by Clive James
And what care these two for a broken heart?
The lady’s calling Time and she is right
My time has come to find a better way
A surer way to navigate at night
The poetic age has had its day
In midnight voices softer than a dove’s
We shall talk superbly of our lost loves
Screen-freak
You’ve got to help me, doc, I see things in the night
The tatters of my brain are bleached with flashing light
Just the way Orion’s sword is pumping stars in flight
My mind’s eye’s skies are glittering and white
The Lady in the Dark has shot the Lady from Shanghai
The Thin Man and the Quiet Man are comin’ through the rye
At Red Line Seven Thousand there’s No Highway in the sky
The villains are the deepest but they plumb refuse to die
Dance, Ginger, dance
The caftan of the caliph turns to powder at your glance
The Ambersons have spiked the punch and livened up the ball
Cagney’s getting big and Sydney Greenstreet’s getting small
The Creature from the Black Lagoon left puddles in the hall
And Wee Willie Winkie is the most evil of them all
Strangers on a Wagon Train have crashed the China Gate
The Portrait of Jennie has decided not to wait
The Flying Leathernecks arrived a half a reel too late
The Broadcast wasn’t big enough and Ziegfeld wasn’t great
Dance, Ginger, dance
The caftan of the caliph turns to powder at your glance
This one for Funny Face and Fancy Pants
The love of Martha Ivers caused the death of Jesse James
Kitty Foyle guessed it though she didn’t link their names
I’ve seen the plywood cities meet their doom because of dames
Atlantis down in bubbles and Atlanta up in flames
And I’ve seen the Maltese Falcon falling moulting to the street
He was caught by Queen Christina who was Following the Fleet
And Scarface found the Sleep was even Bigger than the Heat
When he hit the Yellow Brick Road to where the Grapes of Wrath
are sweet
Dance, Ginger, dance
The caftan of the caliph turns to powder at your glance
This one for Funny Face and Fancy Pants
A buck and wing might fix the Broken Lance
And break my trance
The Double Agent
Your manifest perfections never cease
To drive the day-long terrors out of mind
They are the lights the darkness hides behind
Allowing satisfaction its increase
Beyond the petty boundaries designed
To keep us well aware the world’s unkind
And still your eyes proclaim a reign of peace
A ruined man falls sideways far away
And too far gone to see my lady’s hair
Supposing he was here or she was there
My lover’s mouth has not a word to say
To stanch the flow or slow him on his way
It sends a smile to me across the air
And still I feel that fortune smiles today
Between the breaking of your morning bread
And the final pretty speeches of the night
A million destinies drop out of sight
A million people get it in the head
You join the silks and perfumes of your bed
Like a long delightful insult to the dead
And still your breast is where I’d lay my head
Forgive, forget the rest of what I said
And still your breast is where I’d lay my head
A King at Nightfall
The ring hangs on a string inside your shirt
You wedge the stable door
You eat your beans and bunk down in the straw
A king at nightfall
You’re going to have to learn to live with this
As you work or beg your way towards the border
And shade your face to miss
The multiplying eyes of the new order
You spun the crown away into a ditch
And saw the water close
The army that you fed now feeds the crows
A king at nightfall
You’re going to have to watch your manners now
And never let your face show what you’re missing
Don’t wait for them to bow
Stick out your hand for shaking, not for kissing
Tomorrow’s men who trace you from the field
Will be in it for the bread
There’ll be a price on your anointed head
A king at nightfall
You’re going to have to learn how quick to run
And that means slowly, watching all the angles
Don’t try to use that gun
Stay very loose and cool and out of tangles
You reach to brush your collar free of straw
And then you feel the string
There’s light enough for one look at the ring
And it’s lovely but it doesn’t mean a thing
A king at nightfall
A king at nightfall
Apparition in Las Vegas
When the King of Rock and Roll sang in the desert
He didn’t seem to age like other men
To Vegas came the ladies with pink rinses
Agog to see the dreamboat sail again
To Vegas came the shipwrecked and the broken
Their long regrets, their searing midnight rages
Their disappointment seldom left unspoken
In marriages that turned to rows of cages
He wrote and bound the book of which their early
aspirations were the pages
When the King of Rock and Roll sang in the desert
With a ring of confidence around his smile
He sparkled like the frosting on a drumkit
He was supple as the serpent of the Nile
To Vegas came the ladies with pink rinses
With all their ills and all their soured karma
With all their pills and all their tics and winces
To feel again the liberating drama
Of a shining silver buckskin suit against a solid purple
cyclorama
When the King of Rock and Roll sang in the desert
He broke no hearts that hadn’t burst before
To Vegas came the ladies with pink rinses
It was they and never he that knew the score
And knowing that they only loved him more
To Vegas came the debris of an era
For the promise that no longer could deceive them
Their eyes grew misty as their sight grew clearer
With a drum roll the past began to leave them
And it all drew further from them as the spotlight caught
the King and brought him nearer
Be Careful When They Offer You the Moon
Be careful when they offer you the moon
It gives a cold light
It was only ever made to light the night
You can freeze your fingers handling the moon
Be careful when they offer you the moon
It’s built for dead souls
It’s a colourless and dusty ball of holes
You can break an ankle dancing on the moon
When you take the moon you kiss the world goodbye
For a chance to lord it over loneliness
And a quarter-million miles down the sky
They’ll watch you shining more but weighing less
So be careful when they offer you the moon
It’s only dream stuff
It’s a Tin Pan Alley prop held up by bluff
And nobody breathes easy on the moon
Nobody breathes easy on the moon
Count to ten when they offer you the moon
Touch Has a Memory
Touch has a memory
Better than the other senses
Hearing and sight fight free
Touching has no defences
Textures come back to you real as can be
Touch has a memory
Fine eyes are wide at night
Eyelashes show that nicely
Seeing forgets the sight
Touch recollects precisely
Eyelids are modest yet blink at a kiss
Touching takes note of this
When in a later day
Little of the vision lingers
Memory slips away
Every way but through the fingers
Textures come back to you real as can be
Making you feel
Time doesn’t heal
And touch has a memory
Frangipani Was Her Flower
Frangipani was her flower
And amethyst her birthday stone
The fairest blossom of the bower
She wasn’t born to be alone
And now she was terribly alone
A Ford Cortina was the car
Eleven thirty-five the hour
The squeak of gravel in the drive
Left the damsel in the tower
Pondering her vanished power
Always, everything had gone so well
Her dolls had been the best
She was better than the rest
Always, everything had gone so well
The world at her behest
Had fed her from the breast
Always, everything had gone so well
She was married all in white
To a lad serenely trite
Always, everything had gone so well
And on her wedding night
Things had more or less gone right
By fairest fortune she was kissed
Frangipani was her bloom
A silver spoon was in her fist
Upon emerging from the womb
Tonight she wrecked the room
The Rider to the World’s End
From a phrase by Lex Banning
You simply mustn’t blame yourself – the days were perfect
And so were exactly what I was born to spoil
For I am the Rider to the World’s End
Bound across the cinder causeway
From the furnace to the quarry
Through the fields of oil
And I left you with the sign of the Rider to the World’s End
It was not the mark of Zorro
Written sharply on your forehead with a blade
Just a way of not turning up tomorrow
And of phone calls never made
My time with you seemed ready-made to last for always
And so was predestined to be over in a flash
For I am the Rider to the World’s End
Bound across the fields of oil
Through the broken-bottle forest
To the plains of ash
And I left you with the sign of the Rider to the World’s End
It was not the ace of diamonds
Or the death’s head of the Phantom on your jaw
Just a suddenly relaxing set of knuckles
Never rapped against a door
You were more thoughtful for and fond of me than I was
And so were precisely what I can never trust
For I am the Rider to the World’s End
Bound across the plains of ashes
To the molten metal valleys
In the hills of dust
No Dice
I tried hard to be useful, but no dice
With no spit left I couldn’t soften leather
With these old hands I couldn’t even sew
So yesterday they left me on the ice
I could barely lift my head to watch them go
The sky was white, my eyes grew full of snow
And whatever reached me first, bears or the weather
I just don’t know
Yesterday was oh so long ago – so very long ago
I saw across our path through the lagoon
Thick shrubberies of hail collide and quarrel
Sudden trees of shellburst hump and blow
Our LVT turned through the reef too soon
The front went down, we all got set to go
But the whole routine was just too friggin’ slow
What kind of splinters hit me, steel or coral
I just don’t know
Yesterday was oh so long ago – so very long ago
We hit the secret trails towards thin air
Aware we’d never live to tell the story
And at the last deep lake before the snow
We rigged the slings, chipped out the water-stair
Swung out the holy gold and let it go
It sank so far it didn’t even glow
And if the priests died too to share our glory
I just don’t know
Yesterday was oh so long ago – so very long ago
Yesterday we finished with the ditch
We stacked our spades and knelt in groups of seven
Our hands were wired by an NCO
With a fluent-from-long-practice loop and hitch
No dice – there was nothing left to throw
A bump against your neck and down you go
And if I kept my peace or cried to heaven
I just don’t know
Yesterday was oh so long ago – so very long ago
Yesterday from midnight until dawn
I lay remembering my lost endeavour
The love song that would capture how things flow
The one song that refuses to be born
For I have tried a thousand times or so
To link the ways men die with how they grow
But no dice, and if I’ll do it ever
I just don’t know
Yesterday was oh so long ago
Driving through Mythical America
Four students in the usual light of day
Set out to speak their minds about the war
Unaware that Eddie Prue was on the way
Things had to snap before they knew the score
They were driving through mythical America
A Rooney–Garland show was in the barn
Fields was at the Pussycat Cafe
No one had even heard of Herman Kahn
And Jersey Joe was eager for the fray
Four students had to take it in their stride
And couldn’t feel the road beneath the wheels
Of the car they didn’t know they rode inside
Across the set and through the cardboard hills
They were driving through mythical America
They sold their Studebaker Golden Hawk
And bought a Nash Ambassador Saloon
Bogart said ‘Even the dead can talk’
And suddenly the coats were all raccoon
Four students never knew that this was it
There isn’t much a target needs to know
Already Babyface had made the hit
And Rosebud was upended in the snow
They were driving through mythical America
Gatsby floated broken in the pool
The Kansas City Seven found a groove
Barrymore and Lombard played the fool
And Cheetah slowly taught John Wayne to move
Four students watched the soldiers load and aim
And never tumbled they were on the spot
Moose Malloy pulled ten years on a frame
The dough was phoney and the car was hot
They were driving through mythical America
Henry Ford paid seven bucks a day
Rockwell did the covers on the Post
FDR set up the TVA
And the star
s rode silver trains from coast to coast
Four students blinked at ordinary skies
But the sunlight came from thousands of motels
A highway through the night was in their eyes
And waiting at the roadblock Orson Welles
They were driving through mythical America
Four students never guessed that they were through
Their history had them covered like a gun
It hit them like a bolt out of the blue
Too quick to grasp and far too late to run
They crashed and died together in the sun
They were driving through mythical America
Thief in the Night
A guitar is a thief in the night
That robs you of sleep through the wall
A guitar is a thin box of light
Throwing reflections that rise and fall
It reminds you of Memphis or maybe Majorca
Big Bill Broonzy or Garcia Lorca
A truck going north or a cab to the Festival Hall
And the man who plays the guitar for life
Tests his thumbs on a slender knife
Forever caresses a frigid wife
His fingers travel on strings and frets
Like a gambler’s moving to cover bets
Remembering what his brain forgets
While his brain remembers the fears and debts
Long fingernails that tap a brittle rhythm on a glass
Around his neck a ribbon with a little silver hook
Like some military order second class
You can read him like an open book
From the hands that spend their lives creating tension
From the wrists that have a lean and hungry
Eyes that have a mean and angry look
A guitar is a thief in the night
That robs you of sleep through the wall
A guitar is a thin box of light
