by Clive James
With each nail rusting and grey plank bending.
It’s not a wonder if it never ceases.
In beauty’s bloom you can see time burning:
A lesson learned while your guts are churning.
Her soft, sweet cheek shows the clear blood flowing
Towards the day when her looks are going
Solely to prove there is no returning
The way they came. There’s a trade wind blowing.
We know all this yet we love forever.
Build her a fence and she’ll think you’re clever.
Write her a poem that’s just beginning
From start to finish. You’ll wind up winning
Her heart, perhaps, but be sure you’ll never
Hold on to the rainbow the top sets spinning.
What top? The tin one that starts to shiver
Already, and soon will clatter. The river
Of colour dries up and your mother’s calling
Your name while the ball hasn’t finished falling,
And you miss the catch and you don’t forgive her.
You went out smiling but you go home bawling.
Weep all you like. Earn your bread from weeping.
Write reams explaining there is no keeping
The toys on loan, and proclaim their seeming
Eternal glory is just the dreaming
We do pretending that we aren’t sleeping –
Your tears are stinging? They’re diamonds gleaming.
Think of it that way and reap the splendour
That flares reflected in the chromium fender
Of the Chrysler parked in the concrete crescent.
The surge is endless, the sigh incessant.
A revelation can only tender
Sincere regrets from the evanescent.
Remember this when it floods your senses
With streams of light and the glare condenses
Into a star. It’s a star that chills you.
Don’t fool yourself that the blaze fulfils you
And builds your bridges and mends your fences
Merely because of the way it thrills you –
The breath of life is what finally kills you.
Dreams Before Sleeping
The idea is to set the mind adrift
And sleep comes. Mozart, exquisitely dressed,
Walks carefully to work between soft piles
Of fresh horse-dung. Nice work. Why was my gift
Hidden behind the tree? I cried for miles.
No one could find it. Find the tiger’s face.
It’s in the tree: i.e. the strangest place.
But gifts were presents then. In fact, for short,
We called them pressies, which was just as long,
But sounded better. Mallarmé thought ‘night’
A stronger word than nuit. Nice word. The fort
Defied the tide but faded like a song
When the wave’s edge embraced it at last light.
Which song? Time, time, it is the strangest thing.
The Waves. The Sea, the Sea. Awake and Sing.
Wrong emphasis, for music leads to sex.
Your young man must be stroking you awake
Somewhere about now, in another time.
Strange thing. Range Rover. Ducks de Luxe. Lex rex.
The cherry blossoms fall into the lake.
The carp cruise undisturbed. Lemon and lime
And bitters is a drink for drinkers. Just.
I who was iron burn in silence. Rust.
What would you do to please me, were you here?
The tarte tatin is melting the ice cream.
One sip would murder sleep, but so does this.
Left to itself, the raft floats nowhere near
Oblivion, or even a real dream.
Strange word, nice question. Real? Real as a kiss,
Which never lasts, but proves we didn’t waste
The time we spent in longing for its taste.
Seek sleep and lose it. Fight it and it comes.
I knew that, but it’s too late now. The bird
Sings with its wings. The turtle storms ashore.
Pigs fly. Would that translate to talking drums?
Nice if they didn’t understand a word
Each other said, but drowned in metaphor –
As we do when we search within, and find
Mere traces of the peace we had in mind.
Forget about it. Just get up and write.
But when you try to catch that cavalcade,
Too much coherence muscles in. Nice thought.
Let’s hear it, heartbreak. Happiness writes white.
Be grateful for the bed of nails you made
And now must lie in, trading, as you ought,
Sleep for the pictures that will leave you keen
To draft a memo about what they mean.
You will grow weary doing so. Your eyes
Are fighting to stay open. When they fail
You barely make it back to where you lay.
What do you see? Little to memorize.
A lawn shines green again through melting hail.
Deep in its tree, a tiger turns away.
Nice try, but it was doomed, that strange request
To gaze into the furnace and find rest.
The Carnival
You can’t persuade the carnival to stay.
Wish all you like, it has to go away.
Don’t let the way it moves on get you down.
If it stayed put, how could it come to town?
How could there be the oompah and the thump
Of drums, the trick dogs barking as they jump?
The girl in pink tights and gold headache-band
Still smiling upside down in a hand stand?
These wonders get familiar by the last
Night of the run. A miracle fades fast.
You spot the pulled thread on a leotard.
Those double somersaults don’t look so hard.
Can’t you maintain your childish hunger? No.
They know that in advance. They have to go,
Not to return until they’re something new
For anybody less blasé than you.
The carnival, the carnival. You grieve,
Knowing the day must come when it will leave.
But that was why her silver slippers shone –
Because the carnival would soon be gone.
We Being Ghosts
Too many of my friends are dead, and others wrecked
By various diseases of the intellect
Or failing body. How am I still upright?
And even I sleep half the day, cough half the night.
How did it come to this? How else but through
The course of years, and what its workings do
To wood, stone, glass and almost all the metals,
Smouldering already in the fresh rose petals.
Our energy deceived us. Blessed with the knack
To get things done, we thought to get it back
Each time we lost it, just by taking breath –
And some of us are racing yet as we face death.
Well, good to see you. Sorry I have to fly.
I’m struggling with a deadline, God knows why,
And ghosts keep interrupting. Think of me
The way I do of you. Quite often. Constantly.
Angels Over Elsinore
ALSO BY CLIVE JAMES
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Unreliable Memoirs Falling Towards England
May Week Was In June North Face of Soho
FICTION
Brilliant Creatures The Remake
Brrm! Brrm! The Silver Castle
VERSE
Peregrine Prykke’s Pilgrimage Through the London Literary World
Other Passports: Poems 1958–1985
The Book of My Enemy: Collected Verse 1958–2003
CRITICISM
&nb
sp; The Metropolitan Critic (new edition, 1994)
Visions Before Midnight The Crystal Bucket
First Reactions (US) From the Land of Shadows
Glued to the Box Snakecharmers in Texas
The Dreaming Swimmer Fame in the Twentieth Century
On Television Even As We Speak
Reliable Essays As of This Writing (US)
The Meaning of Recognition Cultural Amnesia
TRAVEL
Flying Visits
To Stephen Edgar
Acknowledgements
My thanks are due to the editors of the Australian, the Australian Literary Review, the Monthly, Meanjin, the Australian Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Spectator, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the Liberal, Standpoint, the New York Times, Poetry (Chicago) and the New Yorker. ‘Les Saw It First’ made its debut in the Festschrift for Les Murray, Letters to Les, published by the Mildura Festival. I would also like to thank the various editors of the annual anthologies The Best Australian Poems and The Best Australian Poetry for their generous harbouring of a carpetbagger. The poem ‘Ramifications of Pure Beauty’ first appeared in The Book of My Enemy, but it needed revision because of factual errors, so I have given it another run. I am well aware that the title of ‘Status Quo Vadis’ is bad Latin. But it is an exact transcription of a line in the film Strictly Ballroom, and therefore has classic status of a kind. Finally, my thanks to Don Paterson for his detailed comments and for choosing the order.
First published 2008 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2010 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-330-52666-1 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-52665-4 EPUB
Copyright © Clive James 2008
The right of Clive James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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