Collected Poems (1958-2015)

by Clive James

  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 slo
w 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.

  Into the singularity we fly

  After a stretch of time in which we leave

  Our lives behind yet know that we will die

  At any moment now. A pause to grieve,

  Burned by the starlight of our lives laid bare,

  And then no sound, no sight, no thought. Nowhere.

  What is it worth, then, this insane last phase

  When everything about you goes downhill?

  This much: you get to see the cosmos blaze

  And feel its grandeur, even against your will,

  As it reminds you, just by being there,

  That it is here we live or else nowhere.

  Nature Programme

  The female panda is on heat

  For about five minutes a year

  And the male, no sprinter at the best of times,

  Hardly ever gets there

  Before she cools off again.

  In the South Island of New Zealand

  There is a rainforest

  With penguins in it.

  They trot along the dangerous trails

  Towards the booming ocean

  Where albatross chicks in training

  For their very first take-off

  Are snatched by tiger sharks

  Cruising in water

  No deeper than your thighs.

  Doomed to the atrophy of lust,

  Lurching with their flippers out,

  Dragged under as they strain for flight,

  They could be you:

  Wonder of nature that you were.

  Managing Anger

  On screen, the actor smashes down the phone.

  He wrecks the thing because he can’t get through.

  He plays it stagey even when alone.

  If you were there, he might be wrecking you.

  Actors believe they have to show, not tell,

  Any annoyance that the script dictates,

  Therefore it’s not enough for them to yell:

  They must pull down a cupboard full of plates.

  An actor wrecks a room. The actress who

  Is playing wife to him does not protest.

  Perhaps she doesn’t have enough to do

  All day, and thinks his outburst for the best.

  For God forbid that actors bottle up

  Their subterranean feelings so that we

  Can’t see them. We must watch the coffee cup

  Reduced to smithereens, the shelf swept free

  Of all its crockery. Another take

  Requires the whole set to be dressed again

  With all the gubbins that he got to break

  The first time. Aren’t they weary, now and then,

  The poor crew, setting up the stuff once more

  That some big baby trashes in a rage,

  And all that fury faked? False to the core,

  The screen experience gives us a gauge

  For our real lives, where we go on for years

  Not even mentioning some simple fact

  That brings us to the aching point of tears –

  Lest people think that it might be an act.

  Echo Point

  I am the echo of the man you knew.

  Launched from the look-out to the other side

  Of this blue valley, my voice calls to you

  All on its own, and more direct for that.

  My line of sweet talk you could not abide

  Came from the real man. It will all be gone –

  Like glitter back to the magician’s hat –

  Soon now, and only sad scraps will remain.

  His body that betrayed you has gone on

  To do the same for him. Like veils of rain,

  He is the cloud that his tears travel through.

  When the cloud lifts, he will be gone indeed.

  Hearing his cry, you’ll see the ghost gums break

  Into clear air, as all the past is freed

  From false hopes. No, I nowhere lie awake

  To feel this happen, but I know it will.

  At the last breath, my throat was full of song;

  The proof, for a short while, is with you still.

  Though snapped at sharply by the whipbird’s call,

  It has not stopped. It lingers for your sake:

  Almost as if I were not gone for long –

  And what you hear will not fade as I fall.

  Too Much Light

  My cataracts invest the bright spring day

  With extra glory, with a glow that stings.

  The shimmering shields above the college gates –

  Heraldic remnants of the queens and kings –

  Flaunt liquid paint here at the end of things

  When my vitality at last abates,

  And all these forms bleed, spread and make a blur

  Of what, to second sight, they are and were.

  And now I slowly pace, a stricken beast,

  Across a lawn which must be half immersed

  In crocuses and daffodils, but I

  Can only see for sure the colours burst

  And coalesce as if they were the first

  Flowers I ever saw. Thus, should I die,

  I’ll go back through the gate I entered when

  My eyes were stunned, as now they are again.
r />   My Latest Fever

  My latest fever clad me in cold sweat

  And there I was, in hospital again,

  Drenched, and expecting an attack of bugs

  As devastating as the first few hours

  Of Barbarossa, with the Russian air force

  Caught on the ground and soldiers by the thousand

  Herded away to starve, while Stalin still

  Believed it couldn’t happen. But instead

  The assault turned out to be as deadly dull

  As a bunch of ancient members of the Garrick

  Emerging from their hutch below the stairs

  To bore me from all angles as I prayed

  For sleep, which only came in fits and starts.

  Night after night was like that. Every day

  Was like the night before, a hit parade

  Of jazzed-up sequences from action movies.

  While liquid drugs were pumped into my wrist,

  My temperature stayed sky-high. On the screen

  Deep in my head, heroes repaired themselves.

  In Rambo First Blood, Sly Stallone sewed up

  His own arm. Then Mark Wahlberg, star of Shooter,

  Assisted by Kate Mara, operated

  To dig the bullets from his body. Teeth

  Were gritted in both cases. No one grits

  Like Sly: it looks like a piano sneering.

  Better, however, to be proof against

  All damage, as in Salt, where Angelina

  Jumps from a bridge onto a speeding truck

  And then from that truck to another truck.

  In North Korea, tortured for years on end,

  She comes out with a split lip. All this mayhem

  Raged in my brain with not a cliché scamped.

  I saw the heroes march in line towards me

  In slo-mo, with a wall of flame behind them,

  And thought, as I have often thought, ‘This is

  The pits. How can I make it stop?’ It stopped.

  On the eleventh day, my temperature

  Dived off the bridge like Catherine Zeta-Jones

  From the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

  I had no vision of the final battle.

  The drugs, in pill form now, drove back the bugs