Angels Over Elsinore

by Clive James

  And all you do is wise and say is true.

  And say is true?

  True as a plumb-line or a billiard cue.

  On from Byzantium to Cooch Behar

  Our Messerschmitt two-seater bubble car,

  Laden with foie gras and with caviare,

  Follows the shining road to Shangri-la.

  To Shangri-la?

  With Blossom Dearie singing in the bar.

  When the sun fades, the Earth will fly away.

  Tell me it isn’t happening today.

  I have a debt of happiness to pay.

  I die if you should leave, live if you stay.

  Live if you stay?

  Live like a king, proud as a bird of prey.

  My share of Heaven and my sheer delight,

  My soda fountain and my water-sprite,

  My curving ribbon of a climbing kite,

  You are my Starlight Roof, my summer night.

  My summer night?

  The flying foxes glide, the possums fight.

  You are my honeydew and panther sweat,

  The music library on my private jet.

  Top of the bill, we fly without a net.

  You are the stroke of luck I can’t forget.

  I can’t forget?

  I’m still not ready for you even yet.

  You are my nicotine and alcohol,

  My Stéphane Audran in a Claude Chabrol,

  My sunlight through a paper parasol,

  My live-in living doll and gangster’s moll –

  And gangster’s moll?

  Mine the fedora, yours the folderol.

  The ring is closed. The rolling dice we cast

  So long ago still roll but not so fast.

  The colours fade that we nailed to the mast

  We lose the future but we own the past.

  We own the past?

  From our first kiss, a lifetime to the last.

  Double or Quits

  Sydney, 2006

  Only when we are under different skies

  The truth strikes home of what love has become:

  A compact it takes time to realise

  Is better far, being less burdensome,

  Than that first tempest by which we were torn.

  Tonight you’re there, where both of us now live,

  And I am here, where both of us were born,

  But there is no division we need give

  A thought to, beyond localised regret:

  For we will be together again soon,

  And both see the one sunrise and sunset

  And the face saved and the face lost by the moon –

  The clouds permitting, which they seldom do

  In England, but at least I’ll be with you.

  I’ll be with you from now on to the end

  If you say so. Should you choose otherwise

  Then I will be a jealous loving friend

  To wish you well yet prove it never dies,

  Desire. Your beauty still bewilders me

  Though half a century has passed. I still

  Stand breathless at the grace of what I see:

  More so than ever, now the dead leaves fill

  The garden. A long distance will soon come.

  Today, no. Nor tomorrow. But it must

  Open the door into Elysium

  For one of us, and me the first, I trust.

  May we stay joined, as these two sonnets are –

  That meet, and are apart, but just so far.

  Overview

  An object lesson in the speed of silence,

  The condensation trail across the sky

  High over London scores the Wedgwood blue

  With one long streak of chalk so true and pure

  It seems an angel has begun to crop-dust

  The lower fields of Heaven.

  Nothing is where you think it is for long.

  Our granddaughter, here for a Sunday visit,

  Goes through the house like a burst of friendly fire

  Or a cosmic particle making its instant transit

  Of a bubble chamber. A close search of my corpse

  Would find the trajectory of her smile.

  Convinced all lasting memories are digital,

  The clump of Japanese tourists at Tower Bridge

  Hold up their telephones like open notebooks.

  As part of their plan, surely now near completion,

  For copying the Earth,

  They snap the coke-line in the stratosphere.

  Our granddaughter would not sit still for that.

  My wife gets pictures only of where she was.

  Our elder daughter says the thing observed

  Changes the observer: it works both ways.

  Our younger daughter is reading Mansfield Park,

  But the cat yawns the soft first syllable

  Of Schrödinger’s name. Everything happens now.

  None of it hangs together except in thought,

  And that, too, will pass. One ought to take

  Solace from the resplendent, but it goes hard

  To know the world view that you had in mind

  Is fading like powdered water,

  Your mark lost in the thin air it was made from.

  The Nymph Calypso

  Planning to leave Calypso in the lurch,

  Odysseus snuck off to build a ship.

  He found the right-shaped boughs of larch or birch

  Or spruce, for all I know, from which to strip

  The bark, and . . . but the details we can skip.

  I won’t pretend that I’ve done much research.

  He had to build a ship and he knew how.

  Just how he did it hardly matters now:

  Enough to say he juggled rib and spar.

  Calypso came to him and said, ‘I see

  That duty calls. Will you be going far?

  You wouldn’t have your mind on leaving me,

  By any chance? Forget the trickery

  For once, and if you’re following your star

  Just say so. Circe lured you with a song.

  At least I wasn’t stringing you along.’

  ‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘I’m an adventurer.

  I sail in search of things. It’s what I do.

  I’d heard about how beautiful you were,

  So lovely that I came in search of you.

  But now I know you and need something new

  To challenge me.’ He wryly smiled at her

  To show he knew he sounded like a ham.

  ‘You wanted me. Well, this is what I am.’

  ‘All very well,’ Calypso said, ‘but I

  Have an investment here. You had to quit

  Sometime, and I gave you a reason why.

  Old studs like you need youth to love. I’m it.

  I’m always eager, and you’re still quite fit:

  A last adventure to light up the sky.

  I’ll tell my tale forever, don’t forget:

  The greatest lover that I ever met.’

  Odysseus could see the point, but still

  He stood his ground, a man of destiny

  Proclaiming his ungovernable will

  To follow the unknown out to the sea

  Beyond the sea, and solve the mystery

  Of where the world went next, and not until

  He had would he find rest. Calypso said,

  ‘No wonder that you turned up here half dead.’

  That night the two of them made love again.

  She slapped herself against him when she came

  The way she always did, but even then

  She let him know she knew things weren’t the same.

  She cried out his polysyllabic name –

  Something she’d never done for other men –

  As if, this time, he was no longer there.

  But though she flattered him with her despair,

  Already he had made the break. His mind

  Was elsewhere, on a
course she could not guess.

  She thought her hero had new worlds to find

  Out on the edge of the blue wilderness,

  But he had lied, to cause her less distress.

  We needn’t think of him as being kind:

  He simply knew the truth would drive her mad

  And make her fight with everything she had.

  After he left, she let the world believe

  She’d given him the boat: a likely tale

  That Homer swallowed whole. Keen to deceive

  Even herself, for no nymph likes to fail –

  The Miss World of the Early Age of Sail

  Had never yet known such a cause to grieve –

  She spread the story that he’d only gone

  Because she told him legends must go on.

  But he was going home. There, in the end,

  Lay the departure point for his last quest.

  Age was a wound that time indeed would mend

  But only one way, with a long, long rest.

  For that, familiar territory is best.

  As for Penelope, he could depend

  On her care for the time he had to live.

  Calypso wanted more than he could give,

  And it was time to take, time to accept

  The quiet bounty of domestic peace.

  After he killed the suitors who had kept

  His wife glued to the loom, she spread the fleece

  Of their first blanket and they found release

  Together as they once had. Though she wept

  For their lost years, she gave him her embrace,

  And he looked down into her ageing face

  And saw Calypso. What the nymph would be,

  Given the gift of time, was there made plain,

  Yet still more beautiful. Penelope,

  Because she knew that we grow old in pain

  And learn to laugh or else we go insane,

  Had life unknown to immortality,

  Which never gets the point. ‘Well, quite the boy,’

  She murmured. ‘And now tell me about Troy.’

  Later the poets said he met his fate

  In the Atlantic, or perhaps he went

  Around the Horn and reached the Golden Gate.

  Space vehicles named after him were sent

  Into infinity. His testament,

  However, and what truly made him great,

  Was in the untold story of the day

  He died, and, more or less, had this to say:

  ‘Penelope, in case you ever hear

  The nymph Calypso loved me, it was so:

  And she tried everything to keep me near

  But finally she had to let me go

  Because she knew I loved you. Now you know,

  And I can move on, having made that clear.’

  And so he did, while she knelt by his side,

  Not knowing, as he sailed on the last tide,

  That just this once he almost hadn’t lied.

  Meteor IV at Cowes, 1913

  Sydney in spring. Tonight you dine alone.

  Walk up the Argyle Cut to Argyle Place

  And turn left at the end. In there you’ll find

  Fish at the Rocks: not just a fish-and-chip joint

  But a serious restaurant, with tablecloths

  And proper glassware. On the walls, a row

  Of photographs, all bought as a job lot

  By a decorator with a thoughtful eye:

  Big portraits of the racing yachts at Cowes

  In the last years before the First World War.

  Lustrous in black and white as deep as sepia,

  The photographs are framed in the house style

  Of Beken, the smart firm that held the franchise

  And must have had a fast boat of its own

  To catch those vivid poses out at sea:

  Swell heaving in the foreground, sky for backdrop,

  Crew lying back on tilting teak or hauling

  On white sheets like the stage-hands of a classic

  Rope-house theatre shifting brilliant scenery –

  Fresh snowfields, arctic cliffs, wash-day of titans.

  What stuns you now is the aesthetic yield:

  A mere game made completely beautiful

  By time, the winnower, whose memory

  Has taken out all but the lasting outline,

  The telling detail, the essential shadow.

  But nothing beats the lovely, schooner-rigged

  Meteor IV, so perfectly proportioned

  She doesn’t show her size until you count

  The human hieroglyphs carved on her deck

  As she heels over. Twenty-six young men

  Are present and correct below her towers

  Of canvas. At the topmost point, the apex

  Of what was once a noble way of life

  Unquestioned as the antlers in the hunting lodge,

  The Habsburg eagle flies. They let her run,

  Led by the foresail tight as a balloon,

  Full clip across the wind, under the silver sun,

  Believing they can feel this thrill for ever –

  And death, though it must come, will not come soon.

  The Magic Wheel

  An ode in the manner of Theocritus

  O magic wheel, draw hither to my house the man I love.

  I dreamed of you as dreaming that, and now

  The boxed-in balcony of my hotel room high above

  Grand Harbour is a sauna. See the prow

  Of that small boat cut silk. Out in the sea

  No waves, and there below not even ripples turning light

  To glitter: just a glow spread evenly

  On flawless water spills into the skyline that last night

  Was a jewelled silhouette from right to left and left to right.

  Behold, the sea is silent, and silent are the winds.

  The not yet risen sun edges the sky

  With petal-juice of the Homeric rose as day begins.

  I am alone, but with you till I die,

  Now we have met again after six years.

  Last night we danced on limestone in the open-air café.

  I saw one woman sitting there near tears,

  Aware that she would never look like you or dance that way –

  A blessing, like the blessings that have brought you home to stay.

  O magic wheel, draw hither to my house the man I love.

  I dreamed of you as dreaming that, until

  I saw you wave in welcome from your window high above,

  And up the slick hard steps designed to kill,

  Like all Valletta staircases bar none,

  I went, as if I still had strength, to find your open door

  And you, and your tremendous little son,

  And your husband, the great dancer, whom I had not met before,

  And I met his kindly eyes and knew you dreamed of me no more.

  Behold, the sea is silent, and silent are the winds.

  Stirred by the ceiling fan, the heat of noon

  Refuses to grow cooler as it very slowly spins,

  But I take its rearrangement as a boon,

  As if it were the gradual work of time,

  Which leaves things as they are but changes us and picks the hour

  To make us see resentment is a crime.

  A loving memory forgets and true regret yields power:

  Trust in the long slow aqueduct and not the water tower.

  O magic wheel, draw hither to my house the man I love.

  I dreamed of you as dreaming that. Tonight

  My dream was gone, but flowering in the darkness high above

  The festa, rockets set the rain alight,

  The soft, sweet rain. With you and your young men,

  I walked the shining streets and all was right and nothing wrong

  As the joy of our first moment lived again.

  In the ruins of the opera house a lizard one inch long<
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  Is the small but vibrant echo of an interrupted song.

  Bethink thee of my love and whence it comes, O holy Moon.

  I dreamed of you as dreaming that, and now

  I know you never did. Another day: the afternoon

  Burns white as only here the sun knows how,

  But a fever is broken when I sweat –

  For my delight in your contentment proves that in the past

  My love must have been true, as it is yet:

  The magic wheel has turned to show what fades and what holds fast.

  Dream this when I am gone: that he was glad for me at last.

  Portrait of Man Writing

  While you paint me, I marvel at your skin.

  The miracle of being twenty-four

  Is there like a first blush as you touch in

  The blemishes that make my face a war

  I’m losing against time. So you begin,

  By lending inwardness to an outline,

  Your life in art as I am ending mine.

  Try not to miss the story my mouth tells,

  Even unmoving, of how once I had

  The knack for capering in cap and bells,

  And had to make an effort to seem sad.

  These eyes that look as crusty as dry wells

  Despite the glue they seep, once keenly shone.

  Give them at least a glimmer of what’s gone.

  I know these silent prayers fall on deaf ears:

  You’ve got integrity like a disease.

  Bound to record the damage of the years,

  You aim to tell the truth, and not to please.

  And so this other man slowly appears

  Who is not me as I would wish to be,

  But is the me that I try not to see.

  Suppose while you paint me I wrote of you

  With the same fidelity: people would say

  That not a line could possibly be true.

  Nobody’s lips in real life glow that way.

  Silk eyelashes! Is this what he’s come to?

  Your portrait, put in words, sounds like a lie,

  Minus the facts a glance would verify.

  But do we credit beauty even when

  It’s there in front of us? It stops the heart.

  The mortal clockwork has to start again,

  Ticking towards the day we fall apart,

  Before we see now all we won’t have then.

  Let’s break for lunch. What progress have we made?

  Ah yes. That’s me exactly, I’m afraid.

  Status Quo Vadis

  As any good poem is always ending,

  The fence looks best when it first needs mending.

  Weathered, it hints it will fall to pieces –

  One day, not yet, but the chance increases