by Clive James
to Prue
If you’re the dreamer, I’m your dream, but when
You wish to wake I am your wish, and grow
As mighty as all mastery, and then
As silent as a star
Ablaze above the city that we know
As Time: so very strange, so very far.
Contents
Sentenced to Life
Driftwood Houses
Landfall
Early to Bed
My Home
Holding Court
Procedure for Disposal
Manly Ferry
Tempe Dump
Living Doll
Event Horizon
Nature Programme
Managing Anger
Echo Point
Too Much Light
My Latest Fever
The Emperor’s Last Words
Compendium Catullianum
Bugsy Siegel’s Flying Eye
Only the Immortal Need Apply
Plot Points
One Elephant, Two Elephant
Asma Unpacks Her Pretty Clothes
Nina Kogan’s Geometrical Heaven
Star System
Change of Domicile
Rounded with a Sleep
Elementary Sonnet
Leçons de ténèbres
Winter Plums
Spring Snow Dancer
Mysterious Arrival of the Dew
Cabin Baggage
Transit Visa
Japanese Maple
Balcony Scene
Sunset Hails a Rising
A Note on the Text
Sentenced to Life
Sentenced to life, I sleep face-up as though
Ice-bound, lest I should cough the night away,
And when I walk the mile to town, I show
The right technique for wading through deep clay.
A sad man, sorrier than he can say.
But surely not so guilty he should die
Each day from knowing that his race is run:
My sin was to be faithless. I would lie
As if I could be true to everyone
At once, and all the damage that was done
Was in the name of love, or so I thought.
I might have met my death believing this,
But no, there was a lesson to be taught.
Now, not just old, but ill, with much amiss,
I see things with a whole new emphasis.
My daughter’s garden has a goldfish pool
With six fish, each a little finger long.
I stand and watch them following their rule
Of never touching, never going wrong:
Trajectories as perfect as plain song.
Once, I would not have noticed; nor have known
The name for Japanese anemones,
So pale, so frail. But now I catch the tone
Of leaves. No birds can touch down in the trees
Without my seeing them. I count the bees.
Even my memories are clearly seen:
Whence comes the answer if I’m told I must
Be aching for my homeland. Had I been
Dulled in the brain to match my lungs of dust
There’d be no recollection I could trust.
Yet I, despite my guilt, despite my grief,
Watch the Pacific sunset, heaven sent,
In glowing colours and in sharp relief,
Painting the white clouds when the day is spent,
As if it were my will and testament –
As if my first impressions were my last,
And time had only made them more defined,
Now I am weak. The sky is overcast
Here in the English autumn, but my mind
Basks in the light I never left behind.
Driftwood Houses
The ne plus ultra of our lying down,
Skeleton riders see the planet peeled
Into their helmets by a knife of light.
Just so, I stare into the racing field
Of ice as I lie on my side and fight
To cough up muck. This bumpy slide downhill
Leads from my bed to where I’m bound to drown
At this rate. I get up and take a walk,
Lean on the balustrade and breathe my fill
At last. The wooden stairs down to the hall
Stop shaking. Enough said. To hear me talk
You’d think I found my fate sad. Hardly that:
All that has happened is I’ve hit the wall.
Disintegration is appropriate,
As once, on our French beach, I built, each year,
Among the rocks below the esplanade,
Houses from driftwood for our girls to roof
With towels so they could hide there in the shade
With ice creams that would melt more slowly. Proof
That nothing built can be forever here
Lay in the way those frail and crooked frames
Were undone by a storm-enhanced high tide
And vanished. It was time, and anyhow
Our daughters were not short of other games
Which were all theirs, and not geared to my pride.
And here they come. They’re gathering shells again.
And you in your straw hat, I see you now,
As I lie restless yet most blessed of men.
Landfall
Hard to believe, now, that I once was free
From pills in heaps, blood tests, X-rays and scans.
No pipes or tubes. At perfect liberty,
I stained my diary with travel plans.
The ticket paid for at the other end,
I packed a hold-all and went anywhere
They asked me. One on whom you could depend
To show up, I would cross the world by air
And come down neatly in some crowded hall.
I stood fora full hour to give my spiel.
Here, I might talk back to a nuisance call,
And that’s my flight of eloquence. Unreal:
But those years in the clear, how real were they,
When all the sirens in the signing queue
Who clutched their hearts at what I had to say
Were just dreams, even when the dream came true?
I called it health but never stopped to think
It might have been a kind of weightlessness,
That footloose feeling always on the brink
Of breakdown: the false freedom of excess.
Rarely at home in those days, I’m home now,
Where few will look at me with shining eyes.
Perhaps none ever did, and that was how
The fantasy of young strength that now dies
Expressed itself. The face that smiled at mine
Out of the looking glass was seeing things.
Today I am restored by my decline
And by the harsh awakening it brings.
I was born weak and always have been weak.
I came home and was taken into care.
A cot-case, but at long last I can speak:
I am here now, who was hardly even there.
Early to Bed
Old age is not my problem. Bad health, yes.
If I were well again, I’d walk for miles,
My name a synonym for tirelessness.
On Friday nights I’d go out on the tiles:
I’d go to tango joints and stand up straight
While women leaned against me trustingly,
I’d push them backward at a stately rate
With steps of eloquence and intricacy.
Alone in the café, my favourite place,
I’d sit up late to carve a verse like this.
I couldn’t do it at
my usual pace
But weight of manner would add emphasis.
The grand old man. Do I dare play that part?
Perhaps I am too frail. I don’t know how
To say exactly what is in my heart,
Except I feel that I am nowhere now.
But I have tempted providence too long:
It gives me life enough, and little pain.
I should be grateful for this simple song,
No matter how it goes against the grain
To spend the best part of a winter’s day
Filing away at some reluctant rhyme
And go to bed with so much still to say
On how I came to have so little time.
My Home
Grasping at straws, I bless another day
Of having felt not much less than all right.
I wrote a paragraph and put some more
Books in a box for books to throw away.
Such were my deeds. Now, short of breath and sore
From all that effort, I prepare for night,
Which occupies the windows as I climb
The stairs. A step up and I stand, each time,
Posed like the statue of a man in pain,
Although I’m really not: just weak and slow.
This is the measure of my dying years:
The sad skirl of a piper in the rain
Who plays ‘My Home’. If I seem close to tears
It’s for my sins, not sickness. Soon the snow
Will finish readying the ground for spring.
The cold, if not the warmth that it will bring,
Is made, each day, so clearly manifest
I thank my lucky stars for second sight.
The children of our street head off for school
Most mornings, stronger for their hours of rest.
Plump in their coloured coats they prove a rule
By moving brilliantly through soft white light:
We fade away, but vivid in our eyes
A world is born again that never dies.
Holding Court
Retreating from the world, all I can do
Is build a new world, one demanding less
Acute assessments. Too deaf to keep pace
With conversation, I don’t try to guess
At meanings, or unpack a stroke of wit,
But just send silent signals with my face
That claim I’ve not succumbed to loneliness
And might be ready to come in on cue.
People still turn towards me where I sit.
I used to notice everything, and spoke
A language full of details that I’d seen,
And people were amused; but now I see
Only a little way. What can they mean,
My phrases? They come drifting like the mist
I look through if someone appears to be
Smiling in my direction. Have they been?
This was the time when I most liked to smoke.
My watch-band feels too loose around my wrist.
My body, sensitive in every way
Save one, can still proceed from chair to chair,
But in my mind the fires are dying fast.
Breathe through a scarf. Steer clear of the cold air.
Think less of love and all that you have lost.
You have no future so forget the past.
Let this be no occasion for despair.
Cherish the prison of your waning day.
Remember liberty, and what it cost.
Be pleased that things are simple now, at least,
As certitude succeeds bewilderment.
The storm blew out and this is the dead calm.
The pain is going where the passion went.
Few things will move you now to lose your head
And you can cause, or be caused, little harm.
Tonight you leave your audience content:
You were the ghost they wanted at the feast,
Though none of them recalls a word you said.
Procedure for Disposal
It may not come to this, but if I should
Fail to survive this year of feebleness
Which irks me so and may have killed for good
Whatever gift I had for quick success –
For I could talk an hour alone on stage
And mostly make it up along the way,
But now when I compose a single page
Of double-spaced it takes me half the day –
If I, that is, should finally succumb
To these infirmities I’m slow to learn
The names of lest my brain be rendered numb
With boredom even as I toss and turn,
Then send my ashes home, where they can fall
In their own sweet time from the harbour wall.
Manly Ferry
Too frail to fly, I may not see again
The harbour that I crossed on the South Steyne
When I was still in short pants. All the boys
Would gather at the rail that ran around
The open engine-room. The oil, the noise
Of rocking beams and plunging rods: it beat
Even the view out from the hurdling deck
Into the ocean. The machinery
Was so alive, so beautiful, so neat.
Years later the old ferries disappeared,
Except for the South Steyne, which looked intact
Where she was parked at Pyrmont, though a fire
Had gutted her. I loved her two-faced grace:
Twin funnels, and each end of her a prow,
She sailed into a mirror and back out,
Even while dead inside and standing still:
Her livery of green and gold wore well
Through years of weather as she went nowhere
Except on that long voyage in my mind
Where complicated workings clicked and throbbed
And everything moved forward at full strength.
And then, while I was elsewhere, she was gone:
And now I, too, await my vanishing,
Which, unlike hers, will be for good. She went
Away to be refitted. In her new
Career as a floating restaurant
She seems set for as long as oysters grow
With chilled white Cloudy Bay to wash them down:
A brilliant inner city ornament.
But is it better to be always there
Than out of it, and just a fading name?
For me, her life was when the engine turned.
Soon now my path across the swell will end.
If I can’t work, let me be broken up.
Tempe Dump
I always thought the showdown would be sudden,
Convulsive as a bushfire triple-jumping
A roadway where some idiot Green council
Had forbidden the felling of gum trees,
And so, with no firebreaks to check its course,
The fire rides on like the army of Attila
To look for houses where the English Garden
Is banned, and there is only the Australian garden,
With eucalypts that overhang the eaves
And shed bark to ensure the racing flames
Will send the place up like a napalm strike.
Instead, it’s Tempe Dump. When we were small
My gang went there exploring. Piston rings
Lay round in heaps, shiny among the junk
Which didn’t shine at all, just gave forth wisps
Of smoke. The dump was smouldering underneath
But had no end in view. This is the fire
Within me, though I harbour noble thoughts
Of forests under phosphorous attack
And in an hour left black, in fields of ash –
Not this long meltdown with its leaking heat,
Its drips of acid, pools of alkali:
This slow burn of what should be finished with
But waits for the clean sweep that never comes.
Living Doll
An Aufstehpuppe is a stand-up guy.
You knock him over, he gets up again:
Constantly smiling, never asking why
The world went sideways for a while back then.
I have an Aufstehpuppe on the shelf
Under the mirror in my living room:
I wish I were reminded of myself
Merrily dipping in and out of doom.
The truth, alas, is I’ve been knocked askew
For quite a while now and I can’t get back
To find the easy balance I once knew.
Until the day when everything goes black
I’ll spend more time than he does on my side
Wishing the sparkle of his painted eyes
Was shared by mine. I envy him his pride:
That simple strength he seems to realise.
My Aufstehpuppe was a crude antique
When first I met him. Soon he might descend
Further into our family, there to speak
Of how we are defeated in the end,
But still begin again in the new lives
Which sort our junk, deciding what to keep.
Let them keep this, a cheap doll that contrives
To stand straight even as I fall asleep.
Event Horizon
For years we fooled ourselves. Now we can tell
How everyone our age heads for the brink
Where they are drawn into the unplumbed well,
Not to be seen again. How sad, to think
People we once loved will be with us there
And we not touch them, for it is nowhere.
Never to taste again her pretty mouth!
It’s been forever, though, since last we kissed.
Shadows evaporate as they go south,
Torn, by whatever longings still persist,
Into a tattered wisp, a streak of air,
And then not even that. They get nowhere.
But once inside, you will have no regrets.
You go where no one will remember you.
You go below the sun when the sun sets,
And there is nobody you ever knew
Still visible, nor even the most rare
Hint of a face to humanise nowhere.
Are you to welcome this? It welcomes you.
The only blessing of the void to come
Is that you can relax. Nothing to do,
No cruel dreams of subtracting from your sum
Of follies. About those, at last, you care:
But soon you need not, as you go nowhere.