Collected Poems (1958-2015)

by Clive James

  He met my eyes and hit me for a quid

  ‘I spend fortunes in this rat-trap’ said the Kid

  ‘But the plush and flock soak up the brain’s kerfuffle

  And I like to see a servile barman shuffle

  If sympathy’s your need let’s hear your bid’

  ‘It’s my lousy memory’ I told the Kid

  ‘What other men forget I still remember

  The flies are still alive inside the amber

  It’s a garbage can with rubbish for a lid’

  ‘Your metaphors are murder’ said the Kid

  ‘I know the mood – give in to it a little

  The man who shatters is the man who’s brittle

  Lay off the brakes and steer into the skid

  ‘Strained virtue warps the soul’ announced the Kid

  ‘Those forced attempts at cleanliness that linger

  Like soap between your wedding ring and finger

  They’re residues of which you’re better rid

  ‘For evil’ said the Hypertension Kid

  ‘Is better contemplated in the deeds of others

  Mass murderers and men who knife their mothers

  Be glad that what you’ve done is all you did

  ‘With me the problem’s women’ said the Kid

  ‘Befuddled, fondled under separate covers

  One and all they’ve gone to other lovers

  As I powered down to zero from the grid

  ‘But I love the little darlings’ sighed the Kid

  ‘The slide from grace is really more like gliding

  And I’ve found the trick is not to stop the sliding

  But to find a graceful way of staying slid

  ‘As for the dreadful memories’ said the Kid

  ‘The waste and poison in the spirit’s river

  Relax your hands and let the bastards quiver

  They tremble more the more you keep it hid’

  We turned to leave the bar, me and the Kid

  I with lightened head and lessened terror

  Toward the street, and he into the mirror

  My second self, the Hypertension Kid

  Perfect Moments

  Perfect moments have a clean design

  Scoring edges that arrest the flow

  Skis cut diamonds in the plump of snow

  Times my life feels like a friend of mine

  Perfect moments wear a single face

  Variations on each other’s theme

  Renoir’s mistresses in peach and cream

  Rembrandt’s mother in a ruff of lace

  Perfect moments bear a single name

  They’re placed together though they never meet

  Charlie Chaplin policing Easy Street

  Charlie Parker playing ‘My Old Flame’

  Perfect moments should redeem the day

  Their teeming richness ought to be enough

  To take the sting out of the other stuff

  A perfect bitch it doesn’t work that way

  The Road of Silk

  And still his dreaming eyes are full of sails

  The tree house leaves the peach tree like a bird

  In time the swelling bark takes in the nails

  Of those adventures nothing more is heard

  Easy

  Let him sleep now

  Not a word

  He’s losing what he hardly knew was there

  The lead dragoons pack up and quit the tray

  The early snowfalls lift into the air

  The Road of Silk rolls backward from Cathay

  Easy

  Let him sleep now

  Come away

  His fondest memories have left their mark

  For just so long as lipstick on a glass

  The highway scatters jewellery through the dark

  The circus leaves a circle on the grass

  Easy

  Let him sleep now

  Let it pass

  The Hollow and the Fluted Night

  This kind of ocean fails to reach the coast

  A special famine rages at the feast

  The one loved most is always present least

  You are the loved one, very nearly here

  Who did not feel so far away before

  But now I fear our separation more

  The hollow and the fluted night that weaves

  The cloth combining loves divides their lives

  Black velvet hills between the silver knives

  The sunlight on the windowsill kowtows

  And opens up the sky to further skies

  For all the thousand miles to your eyes

  The realization daunts the both of us

  And so we draw a deep breath through a kiss

  When was it ever otherwise than thus?

  And what goodbyes are more alone than this?

  Secret Drinker

  Perching high like an old-time man of law

  He travels on a bar stool to enchanted lands

  And as the world before him swims and glows

  The secret drinker’s only sure that he is real

  By the feel of his elbows and the steadily increasing

  Weight of his forehead in his hands

  And behind the bar

  Like turreted and battlemented towns of long ago

  The lines of coloured bottles swim and glow

  Brilliantly as at the day of wrath

  Or the year of the comet

  But the secret drinker is far from it

  Away from it all

  He can ease the present back into the past

  Staring at the pastels and the prisms on the shelf

  With the magic words that make the evening last

  The same again and have one for yourself

  He’s a connoisseur

  He can space it out with chasers, he can let it burn

  It’s a trick it takes a little while to learn

  You might see the youngsters of today sniff a cork

  and they vomit

  But the secret drinker is far from it

  Away from it all

  He can make the looming future lose its sting

  Staving off the pressure is a bargain at the price

  Of the magic words that make the angels sing

  The same again, go easy on the ice

  Perching high like an old-time man of law

  He travels on a bar stool to enchanted lands

  And as the world before him swims and glows

  The secret drinker’s only sure that he is real

  By the feel of his elbows and the steadily increasing

  Weight of his forehead in his hands that should be ceasing

  To tremble by now and beginning to resemble

  The hands of a man he used to know

  Search and Destroy

  I’m glad to say we’re mopping up up here

  I’m sending you today’s report in clear

  Security’s no problem now at all

  You just pick up the phone and make a call

  We should have done all this back at the beginning

  And never let the clowns think they were winning

  We took a month to crack their second man

  But when he talked the strudel hit the fan

  He named eleven leaders who we shot

  And then the top guy’s girl who we’ve still got

  The chick was tough and held out for a week

  But spilled a bibful when we made her speak

  We picked his mother up and worked on her

  He came in on his own and there you were

  We should have nailed the first ones when we found them

  Before all the mystique built up around them

  We never gave the local heat a chance

  To get him on their own and make him dance

  We did him in upcountry, bombed the cave

  And made the whole damn mountainside his grave

  The faithful talk some wishful-thinking c
ock

  About a spook who rolls away the rock

  At which point golden boy walks out alive

  We’re bumping them all off as they arrive

  And that winds up this dreary exhibition

  A total waste of time and ammunition

  Tenderfoot

  Beyond the border town they call Contrition

  The badlands are just boulders and mesquite

  A school of Spanish friars built the mission

  But left because they couldn’t take the heat

  And further on the road to Absolution

  The mesas turn to mountains capped with snow

  And the way becomes a form of execution

  That only hardened travellers can go

  You can tell the horseman grieves for how he sinned

  He rides a killing trail

  Reminded of his hard heart by the hail

  And of his folly by the chilling wind

  By day the canyon ramparts blaze their strata

  Like purple battlements he shall not pass

  The sunlight sears the horseman like a martyr

  The glacier’s a magnifying glass

  And by night the clouds black out the constellations

  While veils of icicles lock up his eyes

  He moves by echo through the cold formations

  Walls of drift and ice-fall fall and rise

  You can tell the horseman grieves for how he sinned

  He rides a killing trail

  Reminded of his hard heart by the hail

  And of his folly by the chilling wind

  He knows he made pretence of love too often

  His deadly carelessness went on for years

  At dawn the shields on his eyes will soften

  And all of his regrets will be in tears

  But far too late to go back and be gentle

  Or say how clearly now it comes to mind

  His pride at never being sentimental

  Was just a clever way to be unkind

  You can tell the horseman grieves for how he sinned

  He rides a killing trail

  Reminded of his hard heart by the hail

  And of his folly by the chilling wind

  Around him lie the stunning and the drastic

  Where nothing but the utmost can be felt

  The temperatures will always be fantastic

  Noon will never cool nor midnight melt

  A fitting climate for one so unfeeling

  Who once was so indifferent to distress

  He’s goaded onward with his senses reeling

  Without the prospect of forgetfulness

  You can tell the horseman grieves for how he sinned

  He rides a killing trail

  Reminded of his hard heart by the hail

  And of his folly by the chilling wind

  The golden handshake and the lightning kisses

  Were all his for the asking in the past

  But the subtlety and softness that he misses

  For them the horseman always moved too fast

  And now at last to contemplate his error

  Facing the dimensions of his loss

  He journeys where the sky meets the Sierra

  That every man alive must one day cross

  You can tell the horseman grieves for how he sinned

  He rides a killing trail

  Reminded of his hard heart by the hail

  And of his folly by the chilling wind

  Care-charmer Sleep

  I’ve come to think

  Of what you are and everything you seem

  As mine to keep

  I am the sleep of which you are the dream

  A state of mind

  Where seeing you and thinking are the same

  But there’s a catch

  I strike a match to set the glass aflame

  And pale purple on a clear liqueur

  That ring of light is all we ever were

  So slight a thing

  In no one’s mind should ever reign supreme

  I’m in deep

  I am the sleep of which you are the dream

  Canoe

  The perfect moon was huge above the sea

  The surf was easy even on the reef

  We were the lucky three

  Who slid in our canoe

  Through the flowers on the water

  And tried to read the signals in the sky

  We travelled with our necklaces of shell

  The moon was waning through the nights and days

  And how we dreamed of home!

  We couldn’t find the island

  Where you trade the shells for feathers

  We fainted in the sun’s reflected blaze

  With cracking lips I turned to tell my friends

  The time had come for all of us to die

  ‘She’s out a whole degree’

  I told them as I floated

  Checking navigation read-outs

  ‘Re-enter at this angle and we’ll fry’

  The go for override came up from Earth

  We took control and flew her with our hands

  And how we dreamed of home!

  We saw the South Pacific

  As we fought to get her zeroed

  Before the heat shield started hitting air

  We came home in a roaring purple flame

  And gave the mission back to the machines

  We were the lucky three

  The parachutes deployed

  We were rocking like a cradle

  As we drifted down in silence to the sea

  I Feel Like Midnight

  I feel like midnight

  And whether a new day

  Will ever dawn

  Is just a guess

  I see by starlight

  The long road from the day

  That I was born

  To this address

  And I look at where you slept

  And I taste the tears you wept

  And you’re here again except

  I feel like midnight

  I feel like midnight

  And you are here again

  To mock me with a smile

  Each time I say

  I feel like midnight

  And the only chance I had

  To rest a while

  I threw away

  Give me a break

  Give me the break of day –

  I feel like midnight

  Ready for the Road

  A belt with a bull’s head for a buckle

  High boots that satisfy the western code

  A signet ring the size of Samson’s knuckle

  And I’m gettin’ ready for the road

  I’m gettin’ ready, I’ll soon be good an’ ready

  Yes I’m gettin’ ready for the road

  I’m gettin’ ready, yes I’ll soon be good an’ ready

  For the road

  Blue jeans that clutch me tighter than a pipe wrench

  Two guns it took a forklift truck to load

  I feel like I’m standin’ in a slit trench

  But I’m gettin’ ready for the road

  For the road is the home of a troubadour

  And a troubadour is what I am

  And I travel the trail of a troubadour

  From the Empire Pool to Birmingham

  But my heart belongs to Tulsa and to Tucson

  For me the Alamo is à la mode

  And just as soon as my horse can get its shoes on

  I’ll be ready for the road

  I’m gettin’ ready, I’ll soon be good an’ ready

  Yes I’m gettin’ ready for the road

  I’m gettin’ ready, yes I’ll soon be good an’ ready

  For the road

  Commercial Traveller

  Home early from a meeting of the reps

  He leaves the cream-bath samples in the car

  A pull-along gorilla guards the steps

  Confusion leads to where
the children are

  At the sandpit

  In the garden

  He wades into the kitchen through the toys

  His wife leans to kiss him with a smile

  And neither knows how much distance led to this

  How long the while

  Since on the sand spit

  In the morning

  The hero

  Lay asleep

  Until

  The nymph adored him

  The early dawn was baby-lotion pink

  And softer than the suds of Infacare

  She laved him of his brine and saw him blink

  He woke to see the sunburst in her hair

  And be her captive

  Always

  He hails the children playing in the sand

  Solves the padlock on the garden shed

  A giant bow should be waiting for his hand

  But there instead

  Lie all the implements

  Of duty

  For centuries

  Employed

  By the prisoner

  On his island

  He plants the hose and sets the nozzle fine

  Embellishing his roses with the spray

  And rainbows of a sea as dark as wine

  On which he will never sail away

  He will never sail away

  He will never sail away

  Urban Guerrilla

  Automatic weapons rake the roof

  Powdered concrete hangs around like spray

  He huddles underneath the parapet

  And knows there is no way –

  This is as far as he will get

  The hostages and all his friends are dead

  His turn is coming soon

  What was it that motherfucker said?

  Better chance of conquering the moon

  He holds his ringing head

  The happy endings never came

  The terrors were seldom just a dream