Japanese Maple by Clive James

[manfredvijars]

Japanese Maple
BY CLIVE JAMES

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 colors 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.
---

[Neville Briggs]

Clive James is a great poet. Wonderful stuff, sadly he now writes mainly about his own demise which is coming soon ( I haven't heard otherwise ).

Since this thread is in General Poetry Discussion, I'll give my crummy opinions, for what they are worth;

; .... Clive's piece is in rhyming iambic pentameter ( except for 3rd line in each stanza ) which he varies with some metric inversions. It's a very traditional form.
But I suspect that this masterpiece would be rejected from an ABPA comp because it would be assessed as inconsistent metre , which of course it is not.

Apart from any technical measuring. I think it is a fine work of emotion and expression, powerful for it's metaphor and indirect approach i.e. more suggestion that spelling out.
I makes my efforts look feeble.



p.s. I have a copy of Clive James translation of the entire Dante's Divine Comedy, which Clive published last year. It is 300 pages of iambic rhyming couplets. Sensational work.

[Robyn]

It's a lovely piece and I see no reason why it would not do well in an ABPA written comp. The metre is established in the first verse and then continued in the rest of the poem - ie is unusual but regular. When I first read it (on a site unconnected to traditional poetry) my only surprise was that it was written it such a traditional form, when Clive James and his mates in the Sydney Push seemed to reveal in non-conformity for so much of their lives.
I love the line:

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends

[Zondrae]

G'day Manny,

Thanks for posting this lovely piece of writing. I agree with Robyn. I see no impediment to it being accepted in a modern competition. The metre and rhyme are very consistent throughout the poem. It has exceptional poetic content and expression. I would love to see something like this in the entries for the Kangaroo Valley Written comp. (which closes at the end of this week)

In fact reading Clive's poem has made me feel like trying to write something addressing nature right now..... but as I have a Ukulele event this afternoon, it will have to wait. I would not put myself on Clive's level of course, but I could have a go.

[Neville Briggs]

Take the 3rd stanza Robyn, Zondrae;


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

I think you have to read it that way or it sounds forced. And I would take bets that in a bush poetry written comp that would be said to be out of rhythm. ( It isn't ) I have NEVER YET seen a winner of a bush poetry comp that has such metric substitutions.

Anyway he capitalises each line, which we have been told by a prominent ABPA judge, is an anachronism unacceptable for today's bush poetry.

And, I totally agree , it is a wonderful poem.

[manfredvijars]

The rhyme scheme—ABABB—is a traditional English quintain, not unlike the second half of a sonnet with its closing couplet. The short third line in the middle represents the heart of each stanza, as well as the poignant trailing off of the A rhyme sound. Sonically, the stanzas are back-loaded, irrevocable in their drifting fall from A to B. There is a sense of heaviness and rest, and of beginnings ghosting away.

What the speaker must do is die. But the lyric defers that destination: James resolves instead to “live to see” the maple’s leaves turn red. In the final stanza, he conjures us into the future, with a vision of the burning tree “filling the double doors to bathe my eyes” so that “a final flood of colors will live on.” His anticipation of completion and fulfillment, so different from our sense of dread, is wrenching. Carefully the language—“fill,” “bathe my eyes,” “flood”—summons the possibility of tears while skirting their explicit mention. But the short third line packs another emotional punch: The apparition of the maple will overwhelm James’ sight “as my mind dies.” (In a way, he is talking about the sensory engulfment of death.) Now it is his consciousness consumed in fire, “burned by my vision of a world that shone/ So brightly at the last, and then was gone.”
Katy Waldman, "Slate" staff writer.

[Neville Briggs]

I knew that !!

[manfredvijars]

Of course you did ........

[Vic Jefferies]

I think Clive mostly wrote with rhyme and metre.

[Heather]

...and life goes on.

It's a beautiful poem. Thanks Manfred., I hadn't read a Clive James poem before.

Heather