"Japanese Maple"

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.

© Clive James 2014


The Japanese Maple tree in the garden at Mum's is truly ablaze this autumn in the "flood of colours" that Australian writer and broadcaster Clive James describes in his poem.  I recorded an interview with Clive James by Mark Lawson for Radio 4's 'Front Row' two summers ago about his translation of Dante's epic poem 'Divine Comedy'.  He had somehow managed to come in to our studio at Broadcasting House, and I remember being shocked at what a frail state he was in, having been diagnosed with terminal leukemia, emphysema and kidney failure some quite some time before.  That he is still alive as I write this journal entry is nothing short of a miracle because he was, even two years ago, in a pretty bad way.   In this very poignant poem, Clive 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".  I hope he is able to see its blazing colours once again this autumn.