James - Sentenced to life: poems 2011--2014

ALSO BY CLIVE JAMES AUTOBIOGRAPHY Unreliable Memoirs Falling Towards England May Week Was In June North Face of Soho The Blaze of Obscurity FICTION Brilliant Creatures The Remake Brrm! Brrm! The Silver Castle VERSE Other Passports: Poems 19581985 The Book of My Enemy: Collected Verse 19582003 Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 19582008 Angels Over Elsinore: Collected Verse 20032008 Nefertiti in the Flak Tower TRANSLATION The Divine Comedy CRITICISM 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 The Revolt of the Pendulum A Point of View Poetry Notebook TRAVEL Flying Visits CLIVE JAMES Sentenced to Life POEMS 20112014 Copyright 2015 by Clive James First American Edition 2016 All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact
W. W. Norton Special Sales at specialsales@wwnorton.com or 800-233-4830 Production manager: Anna Oler ISBN 978-1-63149-172-6 ISBN 978-1-63149-173-3 (e-book) Liveright Publishing Corporation 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. W. W.

Norton & Company, Ltd. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT to Prue If youre the dreamer, Im 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. Acknowledgements I should thank Prue Shaw, Deirdre Serjeantson, Tom Stoppard, David Free and Stephen Edgar for reading these poems as they came out, and for saying what they thought. As in my two previous collections, Don Paterson helped me choose the order and bring the manuscript to a workable finality. I owe special thanks to my elder daughter Claerwen for planting the Japanese maple tree in my garden. As for my younger daughter and my entire family, and for how they looked after me at this fragile yet busy time, I lack the words to thank them sufficiently, except to say that the words might be somewhere in this little book; too much decked out with the trappings of premature sorrow, perhaps; but any strength of form is surely a reflection of how well I was guarded against despair by the joy and kindness with which I was surrounded.

As often happens with poetry, the ostensible meaning and the deeper meaning might be at variance. To put it less grandly, you can say that youre on your last legs, but the way you say it might equally suggest that you could run a mile in your socks. There are editors and poetry editors to thank: of the New Yorker , the Yale Review , the New Statesman , the Spectator , Standpoint , Quadrant , the Australian and the British Medical Journal: Supportive and Palliative Care . But above all other editors I must thank Alan Jenkins of the TLS , who encouraged me in the notion that a poet who is up against it might well make a subject out of being up against it. At my base in Cambridge, Susie Young and Dawn Crow combined their efforts to guide a stream of electronic manuscripts into my website and out again. I should also thank the editors and anchor-persons of various radio and television stations in the UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada who kindly asked me to read some of these poems aloud: an offence, perhaps, to those who believe that a poem should be merely overheard, but an unbeatable way of barking for ones act.

Contents 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 daughters 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 Im told I must Be aching for my homeland. Had I been Dulled in the brain to match my lungs of dust Thered 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. 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 Im 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 Youd think I found my fate sad. Hardly that: All that has happened is Ive 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. Theyre gathering shells again. And you in your straw hat, I see you now, As I lie restless yet most blessed of men.

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 for a full hour to give my spiel.

Here, I might talk back to a nuisance call, And thats 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, Im 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.