Injury Time

by Clive James

  “It was then,” she wrote later in her memoirs,

  “That I realised I was Karsavina.”

  It’s getting late. The garden has gone quiet.

  The conference of the finches is dismissed.

  Time to go in and rest from too much watching

  How time, like fame, flies on such fleeting wings.

  No birds were hurt in the making of this poem.

  The Rest is Silence

  or

  Stroking Her Feet to Opus 131

  I

  Rehearsing this quartet, Beethoven heard

  Nothing at all. He checked the players by

  Watching their bows. He barked the odd harsh word

  But couldn’t hear that either, and yet I

  Am blissed out once again by what he found

  When searching in his world without a sound

  There, near the end. The Ninth was done. To die

  Was really all the man had left to do,

  And yet he did this. In our time apart,

  Grand opera was what most appealed to you,

  But now I hope that you may take to heart

  This music without voices, which in fact

  Is singing in its essence, the contact

  Of Earth with Heaven in a surf of art

  Whose forms diversify and fractionate

  Past all our expectations except one:

  What happens next will be well worth the wait

  And prove a burst of beauty was begun

  Far back, the way the upsurge of the sun

  Is written in the stars.

  II

  I love this bit, this bit I love. Bit this,

  Bit that. Fragments advance. Collect. Go back.

  These pizzicato figures you can fit

  Short words of Shakespeare to. Alas, alack,

  To smooth. That rough. Touch with. A tender kiss.

  Enough of that. This is the end of it.

  Too smooth. Examine that word “soothe”:

  It’s so, oh, the. The flexing female foot,

  Touched underneath by a male fingernail,

  Signals approval of a cruel finesse.

  Suave harshness. Harshly suave. Again. Stop go.

  Of that which is desired, too much.

  Of that which is desired too much, no end.

  But soft, she stirs. Be not at fault. Go slow.

  A cliff of dissonance grinds to a halt

  And turns to snowflakes on a windless night

  That fall past the streetlight.

  III

  The end was coming in his quiet kingdom.

  A tyrant with his conversation books

  Which really meant that he did all the talking,

  He set old friends against each other. He

  Was never a nice man as Haydn was.

  I know you think I cite the bastardry

  Of artists to excuse myself because

  My conscience would ache otherwise. It’s true,

  But let me say – I’ll whisper it – this much:

  It might have taken inner turmoil to

  Bring him at last to this sublimity,

  A fist of rage unfolding to a touch

  As light as fingertips on curling toes,

  And if he did not smile, watching the bows,

  It meant a blessing when he did not frown.

  Still air, still air, and still the flakes come down.

  IV

  The women he loved best were out of reach –

  The Countess Kegelwicz, Countess Guicciardi,

  Countess Erdödy, Countess This or That –

  Because of his low birth. Pity him, then:

  His “van” did not mean “von”. He was not noble,

  Except for ranking above any man

  Alive, and she, the one he called Immortal,

  The Immortal Beloved,

  Knew that, and gave him what she had to give:

  They kissed each other, at the very least.

  “My angel, my everything, my very self”

  He wrote, and wrote it always in his music.

  His Josephine was like Napoleon’s: there always

  Even under other names. Jeanette,

  Eleanore, Magdelena and Babette:

  They all were her, and when he reached for her

  They all were in his arms. Born for each other.

  Sie waren für einander geboren

  Wrote her sister Therese. Unless Therese

  Was the Immortal Beloved. Speculation

  Continues. But for sure, though short and ugly,

  The famously great flirt was not all talk:

  He knew exactly what a woman felt like,

  Although, perhaps, it only almost happened.

  The Distant Beloved was someone else again,

  And no one has an inkling who Elise was –

  We just know he wrote her a bagatelle

  Which, played on YouTube by Pogorelich,

  Must stir the depths of his immobile hairstyle –

  But it’s fair to guess Beethoven felt the heat

  A woman gives off even from her insteps,

  Before he reached the cool room of these structures

  Separately drifting in transparent air,

  Connected only by the space between them.

  V

  For just a few bars you can hear the fury

  With which he crossed the Emperor’s name

  Off the Eroica. If you first have that,

  Then later Florestan and Leonore

  Can come back to each other’s arms.

  It’s said of him he wrote only one opera

  And yet he wrote the only opera,

  But here, too, we are listening to voices:

  It’s just that they’ve been turned to wood and catgut

  Like metamorphoses from Ovid.

  Out of the tumult drifts serenity

  All the more calm from being so hard-won:

  Sweetness from bitterness, a prisoner

  Released into the sunlight.

  VI

  As from the white break of the vault there slides

  The surf rider

  Trailing his seaside fingertips

  Like a stylus through the wave’s green face,

  Out of the conflict a new concord comes

  With an extra grace,

  A bride’s glide,

  Like the peaceful grief on the Madonna’s lips

  Of the St Peter’s Pietà.

  It’s sixty years since I first heard the Seventh

  And knew I would write poetry for life,

  And we, for all that time, have known each other,

  And for most of it been man and wife,

  And, now it has been proved not even I

  Could quite destroy all that,

  We are still here, together for as long

  As life permits. Next stop, eternity:

  Which could be what he’s trying to say now.

  VII

  Did he know his death was close? No one can tell.

  He might have thought it had already come

  When deafness did. This loveliness might sound

  Like a summation, but we should beware

  Of teleology. He left a sketch

  For a Tenth symphony. Art masters have

  Rarely packed up to leave the studio:

  They live in it, and always would do more.

  Though they might turn their faces to the wall,

  They sing in silence. After this last note

  Silence returns, but is not the same void

  We heard before the start. In silence squared

  We rise up from the couch and live again,

  As if on the first day we ever touched.

  Edith Piaf on YouTube

  Nobody sings a song of love like her.

  I’ve picked three tracks you haven’t heard before

  To take us back again to where we were

  When we first met.

  Tu e
s partout. Je sais comment. La valse de l’amour.

  If we had heard these then, would we have been

  So bold as to believe love might stay true?

  She says that love has nothing it can mean

  Beyond its loss.

  La valse de l’amour. Je suis content. Tu es partout.

  The long run happened and we placed the bet.

  We rolled the dice and saw them pitch and toss,

  And still it seems we’re no more finished yet

  Than these songs are:

  La vie en rose. Ah! Ça ira! Ne me quitte pas.

  A Heritage of Trumpets

  The clear, clean line was always the ideal.

  Though there was subtlety in how Miles muttered,

  One always ached to hear a song-line uttered

  With definition, lyrical and real:

  A well-timed silence puncturing the swing

  Only to add propulsion. Play that thing!

  Bunk Johnson used to do that, way back when,

  Inheriting the clean articulation

  Of Buddy Bolden. The controlled sensation

  Of vaulting gold that drove a funeral then,

  Linked death to dancing people, grief to joy:

  The rich, sweet notes rang like the real McCoy.

  The open horn was king. There was no mute,

  Not even Cootie’s, that could set the measure

  Of confidently opened casks of treasure

  Lighting the cave, and turning the blue suit

  Of tactful mourning to a pirate kit:

  The lawlessness, the skipping lilt of it.

  Pure gold in Paris after WWII,

  Bill Coleman’s open horn proved mainstream muscle

  Could still outstrip the nervous, shuffling hustle

  Of New York be-bop. Louis Armstrong blew

  Coherent lines until the very end.

  The same requirement applies, my friend,

  To you, and all the more so as the day

  Arrives when silence reigns, and Bix in glory

  With just one passing phrase sums up your story:

  The dying voice of silence. Blaze away

  Into the dark, bugler. Be sure the night

  Reflects your song with every point of light.

  Panis Angelicus

  Tipped off by you, I watched the YouTube clip

  Of Pavarotti and his father singing

  That transcendental César Franck duet

  In the gallery of Modena Cathedral.

  Slowly the lens pans up, and there they are.

  Now they are in my dreams, perhaps because

  The guiding father is a theme for me

  That aches a long way down. More likely, though,

  This haunting happens for the simple reason

  They sound so very beautiful together

  We might be listening to a strand of life

  Slowly assembling and made audible

  In all its linkages and balancings,

  As if the way an angel sings had been

  Caught in a mirror and returned through time.

  A lifetime has gone by since we first listened

  To music and, wrapped in it, found each other.

  Forgive me for not seeing straight away

  It was the blessing by which we two pagans

  Late in our lives might eat the bread of angels.

  Sweet Disaster

  (Ronsard Sings of Hélène)

  For you, it’s easy to lay down the law

  At your age, just a fraction of my age.

  All you need do is turn another page

  And suddenly you see my name no more.

  Where have I gone? It’s almost a surprise,

  But all too soon you will believe your eyes

  And think I vanished, as you told me to,

  From all the world. The world, though, is still here

  For me, and achingly devoid of you –

  Worse, there are fantasies that come too near

  Resembling you. They bend and speak to me

  In your voice, whispering, “What do you see?”

  I see you sighing in the grip of bliss:

  That much you heard me say, and now you say

  Well, that will do. No more for you today,

  Or ever. Not a touch and not a kiss.

  I have my life to start. This has to end

  With one clean break that no soft soap can mend.

  Bravely I take it in and hope you lie,

  But know you don’t, for you are not the type:

  Too true by nature. When you caught my eye

  I knew already that our time was ripe

  To run its course in just a year or less

  And end. And now I live with my distress

  And it is worse, far worse, than I supposed

  It might be when I first became aware

  That I would suffer if you were not there.

  I still can’t bear to see the chapter closed,

  And it is months now and will soon be years

  That you are not here to behold my tears.

  What was achieved? For you, I hope and trust,

  Some guarantee there is a gentle touch

  A man can have which proves him not unjust

  In this dispute where women risk so much:

  And as for me, although I lost, I won

  Your love awhile, a great thing to have done.

  Throughout this poem I have changed the frame

  To bring two rhymes together, then apart,

  Thus echoing, with one cry from my heart,

  Our dance of love. Let this, then, be your fame

  When you are gone, if it be my fame too,

  To find true glory through my loss of you.

  Declaration of Intent

  My poems are the balladry of cavaliers

  Composed in the lost cause that was the King’s,

  And if from time to time their ink seems blurred with tears

  It is because the way of things

  Has gone against the haughty confidence

  That once allied sweet music to sound sense,

  So now their rhymes and rhythms count as frills and rings.

  My poems are the closing words of heretics

  Burnt to a cinder and their dust dispersed.

  A fierce belief that melts to stain the courtyard bricks

  Proves its sincerity at first,

  But fades in sunlight as the winning side

  Writes history and denies even the pride

  Of those who lost, the cruelty that hurts them worst.

  My poems written now that I must take my leave

  Give thanks good fortune saw me kindly borne

  To this departure point, and therefore when they grieve

  It is for anyone they mourn

  But me. I still recall, when I’m alone,

  Children of my age marked with stars and thrown

  Into the night and fog, the falling ash of dawn.

  My poems sing of life. Though death is also there

  In how they crystallise an emphasis

  Like a tango maestro pausing, they do not despair:

  They just acknowledge the abyss

  Awaiting us. It brings finality

  To what we were. It will do that for me

  Soon now. My poems prove that I accepted this.

  My poems take defeat for granted, but they say,

  Gallant or gaunt, if we can choose to die

  We have been blessed to live. It never came my way,

  That random flail of chance, and why

  My life must end is known to me. In view

  Of these facts, I take care that what I do

  Pays back the luck with which I lived to see time fly.

  Initial Outlay

  I take off my disguise and thus reveal

  The man I used to be but now am not.

  Surely when I made mirth I was less real

  Than I am now. Before this thing I
’ve got

  Made laughter hard, I used to spread around

  My sunny nature with a liberal hand:

  Not overdoing it, you understand,

  But eager to amuse, if not astound.

  My death came very near, and out of that

  I also tried to make a joke, but then

  Death didn’t happen and the joke fell flat,

  And bit by bit I came alive again.

  I still faced doom, but when that day would be

  Was back in question. Thus I shared the case

  Of anyone at all, since all must face

  That imprecisely distant certainty.

  Winter again, but low on snow and ice.

  My lungs are less taxed than they might have been.

  The distant thunder of the rolling dice

  Grows silent, as if death had quit the scene.

  At this rate I will still be here in spring,

  And that will make, since I fell ill, six years

  I wasn’t meant to have. I could shed tears

  For what I’ve lost, but I’ve gained everything:

  My family built this house for me just so

  That I may read and write. No doubt my last

  Lines will be written here. For all I know,

  That means tomorrow, but for now the past,

  So vivid in my mind, suggests I might

  Consider both men real, the cock-a-hoop

  Rapscallion and this old crock with the stoop

  Who sits and scrawls away the live-long night,

  Making a neat design of penitence,

  Transmuting shame into a melody,

  As if the senseless paved the way for sense

  Or craft made up for infidelity,

  And all that heartbreak were the price for this

  That I at last can do now, having learned

  The truth about the cost for all concerned

  Of my apprenticeship in artifice.

  Night-Walker’s Song

  How strange, that now my strength is sunk so low,

  My powers of handicraft have reached their height,

  Starting new poems even in the night

  So I must, cursing, rise, and slowly go

  Downstairs to settle at my desk and write

  Until my kitchen fills with the dawn light,

  And pages fill, too, with fresh stanza frames

  I fancy rich and sweet as honeycomb,

  Black holes on paper where starlight, instead

  Of hiding, comes back sparkling from the dead.

  Why don’t I think that these are just word-games

  A broken man plays in the nursing home?