by Clive James
He put Sydney Tech on the football map.
There were whole GPS teams he went through
Like a bat through a dark cave.
Sydney High, with backs the size of forwards,
Only barely stopped him,
And they practically used land mines.
Wanting to be him, I so conspicuously wasn’t
That I would brood for hours in the library,
One kid from Kogarah utterly wiped out
By the lustre of another.
Later on, as a pro, he won national fame.
His shining story followed me to England:
I couldn’t get away from the bastard.
By the time I got a slice of fame myself –
And we’re talking about the echo of a whisper –
His nephew Mark was playing:
Clear proof that the gift was in the blood.
Reg is retired now
And not writing as many poems as I am,
But give me my life again and I would still rather
Be worshipped in the school playground
By those who saw him score the winning try,
A human dodgem snaking through a bunch of blokes
All flying the wrong way like literary critics –
Or at least I think so,
Now that I can’t sleep without socks on.
At Ian Hamilton’s Funeral
Another black tie invitation comes:
And once again, the black tie is the long
Thin one and not the bow. No muffled drums
Or stuff like that, but still it would be wrong
To flout the solemn forms. Fingers and thumbs
Adjust the knot as I recall the song
About the gang that sang ‘Heart of My Heart’.
Death brings together what time pulled apart.
In Wimbledon, a cold bright New Year’s Eve
Shines on the faces that you used to know
But only lights the depth to which they grieve
Or are beginning to. The body-blow
You dealt us when you left we will believe
When it sinks in. We haven’t let you go
As yet. Outside the church, you’re here with us.
Whatever’s said, it’s you that we discuss.
We speak of other things, but what we mean
Is you, and who you were, not where you are.
No one would call the centre of the scene
That little box inside the big black car.
Two things we wish were true: you made a clean
Getaway, and you have not gone far.
One thing we’re sure of: now the breath is fled
You aren’t in there, you’re somewhere else instead –
Safe in a general memory. We file
Inside. The London literati take
Their places pew to pew and aisle to aisle
At murmured random. Nothing is at stake
Except the recollection of your smile.
All earned it. Who most often? For your sake
Men wrote all night, and as for women, well,
How many of them loved you none can tell.
Those who are here among us wear the years
With ease, as fine-boned beauty tends to do.
It wasn’t just your looks that won the tears
They spill today when they remember you.
Most of us had our minds on our careers.
You were our conscience, and your women knew
Just by our deference the man in black
Who said least was the leader of the pack.
Dressed all your life for mourning, you made no
Display. Although your prose was eloquent,
Your poetry fought shy of outward show.
Pain and regret said no more than they meant.
Love sued for peace but had nowhere to go.
Joy was a book advance already spent,
And yet by day, free from the soul’s midnight,
Your conversation was a sheer delight.
Thirsty for more of it, we came to drink
In Soho. While you read his manuscript
You gave its perpetrator time to think
Of taking up another trade. White-lipped
He watched you sneer. But sometimes you would blink
Or nod or even chuckle while you sipped
Your scotch, and then came the acceptance fee:
The wit, the gossip, the hilarity.
You paid us from your only source of wealth.
Your finances were always in a mess.
We told each other we did good by stealth.
In private we took pride in a success:
Knowing the way of life that wrecked your health
Was death-defying faith, not fecklessness,
We preened to feel your hard-won lack of guile
Rub off on us for just a little while.
For lyric truth, such suffering is the cost –
So the equation goes you incarnated.
The rest of us must ponder what we lost
When we so prudently equivocated.
But you yourself had time for Robert Frost –
His folksy pomp and circumstance you hated,
Yet loved his moments of that pure expression
You made your own sole aim if not obsession.
Our quarrel about that’s not over yet,
But here today we have to let it rest.
The disagreements we could not forget
In life, will fade now and it’s for the best.
Your work was a sad trumpet at sunset.
My sideshow razzmatazz you rarely blessed
Except with the reluctant grin I treasured
The most of all the ways my stuff was measured.
Laughter in life, and dark, unsmiling art:
There lay, or seemed to lie, the paradox.
Which was the spirit, which the mortal part?
As if in answer, borne aloft, the box
Goes by one slow step at a time. The heart
At last heaves and the reservoir unlocks
Of sorrow. That was you, and you are gone:
First to the altar, then to oblivion.
The rest is ceremony, and well said.
Your brother speaks what you would blush to hear
Were you alive and standing with bowed head.
But you lie straight and hidden, very near
Yet just as far off as the other dead
Each of us knows will never reappear.
You were the governor, the chief, the squire,
And now what’s left of you leaves for the fire.
Ashes will breed no phoenix, you were sure
Of that, but not right. You should hear your friends
Who rise to follow, and outside the door
Agree this is a sad day yet it ends
In something that was not so clear before:
The awareness of love, how it defends
Itself against forgetfulness, and gives
Through death the best assurance that it lives.
Press Release from Plato
Delayed until the sacred ship got back
From Delos, the last hour of Socrates
Unfolded smoothly. His time-honoured knack
For putting everybody at their ease
Was still there even while the numbness spread
Up from his feet. All present in the cell
Were much moved by the way he kept his head
As he spoke less, but never less than well.
Poor Crito and Apollodorus wept
Like Xanthippe, but not one tear was his
From start to finish. Dignity was kept.
If that much isn’t certain, nothing is.
I only wish I could have been there too.
When, later on, I wrote down every word,
I double-checked – the least that I could do –
To make it sound as if I’d
overheard.
But let’s face facts. He lives because of me.
That simple-seeming man and what he meant
To politics and to philosophy –
These things have not survived by accident.
Deals to be done and details to discuss
Called me elsewhere. I’m sorry for that still.
He owed a cock to Aesculapius.
Socratic question: guess who paid the bill?
Young Lady Going to Dakar
Another annual boat trip from Le Havre
To Bordeaux, but this time different. When Lautrec
Beheld the girl from Cabin 54
On deck reading, he decided to stay on
Until Lisbon at least. Painting had raised
The Paris cabarets, dance-halls and brothels
To angelic levels, but this unclouded creature
Started where all that finished. How not dream –
As she in her deckchair read and he nearby
Sketched for La Passagère du cinquante-quatre:
Promenade en yacht – that she would see his tears
And ask him to come with her to Dakar,
There to return his looks with the same favour,
Even for his legs? The painter’s friend
Maurice Gilbert howled down the mad idea
Of Africa. They got off at Lisbon
And returned to Bordeaux overland.
In Toledo, for the first time in his life,
He saw El Greco. Dry-eyed, he took on
More strength, as if more strength were what he needed,
And not what he would instantly have traded
For just one glance from her untouched by pity:
Not even playful. Casual would have done.
The naked flame behind that cabin door!
Perish the thought. Paint her and finish her,
Drowned like the Holy Name in molten gold.
Ramifications of Pure Beauty
Passing the line-up of the narrow-boats
The swans proceed down river. As they go
They sometimes dip and lift an inch or so.
A swan is not a stick that merely floats
With the current. Currents might prove too slow
Or contrary. Therefore the feet deploy:
Trailed in the glide, they dig deep for the thrust
That makes the body bob. Though we don’t see
The leg swing forward and extend, it must
Do so. Such a deduction can’t destroy
Our sense-impression of serenity,
But does taint what we feel with what we know.
Bounced from up-sun by Focke-Wulf ‘Long Nose’
Ta -152s, Pierre Clostermann
Noted their bodies ‘fined down by the speed’:
And so they were, to his eyes. Glider wings,
Long legs and close-cowled engine made the pose
Of that plane poised when stock-still. In the air,
High up and flat out, it looked fleet indeed.
What pulled it through the sky was left implied:
You had to know the turning blades were there,
Like the guns, the ammo and the man inside
Who might have thought your Tempest pretty too –
But not enough to stop him killing you.
The crowds for Titian cope with the appeal
Of flayed Actaeon. Horror made sublime:
We see that. Having seen it, we relax
With supine ladies. Pin-ups of their time,
Surely they have no hinterland of crime?
Corruption would show up like needle-tracks.
No, they are clean, as he was. All he knew
Of sin was painting them with not much on.
Even to fill a Spanish contract, he
Fleshed out the abstract with the sumptuous real –
Brought on the girls and called it poetry.
Philip II felt the same. Why think
At this late date about the mortal stink
Of the war galley, graceful as a swan?
The Serpent Beguiled Me
Following Eve, you look for apple cores
Along the riverbank, tossed in the mud.
Following Adam down long corridors,
You swing your torch to look for spit and blood.
He got his chest condition when he learned
Contentment made her curious. He thought
He was enough for her, and what he earned
Would keep her pinned while he played covert sport.
Alas, not so. She claimed that privilege too,
And even, under wraps, nursed the same pride
In taking satiation as her due –
A cue to call herself dissatisfied.
That rate of change was coded by the tree
Into the fruit. The instant thrill of sin
Turned sweet release to bitter urgency:
His fig leaf was flicked off, and hers sucked in.
From that day forth, the syrup she gave down
Smacked of the knowledge that she felt no shame.
The modesty for which she won renown
Was feigned to keep her freedom free of blame.
There was a time when, if he had not worn
Her out, she would have lain awake and wept.
Why was the truth, we ask, so slow to dawn?
He should have guessed it from how well she slept.
And when she turned to him, as she did still,
Though the old compulsion was no longer there,
The readiness with which she drank her fill
Told him in vain her fancy lay elsewhere.
He never faced the fact until she went.
He tracked her down and asked her what was wrong.
For once she said exactly what she meant:
‘It was perfect. It just went on too long.’
State Funeral
In memory of Shirley Strickland de la Hunty
Famous for overcoming obstacles
She finally finds one that checks her flight.
Hit by the leading foot, a hurdle falls:
Except when, set in concrete, it sits tight.
Not that she hit too many. Most she cleared,
Her trailing leg laid effortlessly flat.
As in repose, at full tilt she appeared
Blessed with a supple grace. On top of that
She studied physics, took a good degree,
Had several languages to read and speak.
Alone, she wasn’t short of company:
In company she shone. She was unique
Even among our girl Olympians
For bringing the mind’s power and body’s poise
To perfect balance. Ancient Greeks had plans
Along those lines, but strictly for the boys.
Her seven medals in three separate Games
Should have been eight, but she retired content.
In time she sold the lot to feed the flames
Of her concern for the Environment.
Civic responsibility: but one
Kind of pollution lay outside her scope
To counteract. The races she had run
Were won now by sad cyborgs fuelled with dope.
It started in the East. The State required
Results that only science could supply.
The female victims, suitably rewired
For victory, could do everything but fly.
And if some wept for how they changed, too bad.
The doctors did what they were ordered to
And told the chosen ones they should be glad:
Drink this, and it will make a man of you.
The plague spread to the West, where money talked.
Poor women, like poor men, had much to gain
Through muscle. The bad bottle was uncorked.
They plucked their chins and thought it worth the pain.
Perhaps it was, yet one glimpse of Flo-Jo
Transmuted to a charging buffalo,
She mourned with painted nails for what she’d lost.
But more was lost than that. The time had come
When no one could be trusted any more
Because to play it straight seemed simply dumb,
And who remembered how things were before?
Desire beats scruple into second place.
Gratification makes a fool of thrift.
The only rules are Rafferty’s. The race
Is to the sly that once was to the swift.
A brighter future, back there in the past,
Flared for a moment but it flickered out.
It speaks, our flag that flutters at half mast,
Of final silence. Let it silence doubt:
When Shirley raced, the wings on her spiked shoes
Were merely mythical, like Mercury’s.
She did it unassisted, win or lose.
The world she did it in died by degrees
While she looked on. Now she is spared the sight
At last. The bobby-dazzler won’t be back,
Who ran for love and jumped for sheer delight
In a better life and on a different track –
We have too much if she is what we lack.
This Is No Drill
Out on my singing teacher’s patio
While waiting for my lesson, I sat smoking,
And on the flag-stone about three feet from my chair
A scoop of bird shit suddenly appeared.
It looked like a nouvelle cuisine hors d’oeuvre,
A brown-green snail-pulp dollop on a bed
Of mascarpone hardening to meringue
As I watched, stupefied. I searched the sky
And there was nothing. Clean sweep. Been and gone.
So high up that it flies with the U-2s
And sees the Earth’s curve, this bird calculates
Trajectories with so much to factor in –
Cloud density, speed, height, wind over target –
The wonder is it didn’t miss by miles.
Instead, the point of impact was so close
The shock wave took the air out of my lungs.
Inside the house I croaked scales, and remembered
That day in the Piazza Santa Croce –
It must be thirty years back, maybe more –
When I got taken out by such a load
I felt the weight, and had to sit around
While the gunk dried on my brand new jacket. Why
These sneak attacks? We give them enough aid.
At least Prometheus and Tippi Hedren
Could see them coming. This is something else.
What do they want, a seat at the UN?