RIP CLIVE JAMES

Shadorma

goodbye clive
who loved italian
opera
rest in peace
the poet from kogarah
made us laugh often

tango champ
spoke eight languages
translated
il dante
into poetic verses
a renaissance man






loved telly
high and low culture
loved sydney
miss piggy
his humour was common sense
dancing in sunlight


One of his recently published poems, Japanese Maple, is about a tree given to him by his daughter. In this deeply poignant poem, James delights in the tree's soft presence in the back garden of his Cambridge home, while challenging himself to live until autumn in order to see its leaves "turn to flame".

Japanese Maple 

Clive James born October 7th 1939 - died November 24th  2019

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

‘Japanese Maple’ appears in Clive James’s collection, Sentenced to Life.