Japanese Maple - Clive James

I was sad to hear of Clive James passing this week.  "Unreliable Memoirs" was a wonderful read and I have always admired his incredible way with words and sense of humour and wisdom.  So today we have maples and a Clive James poem.  Click on the title to hear Clive read the poem.

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.

‘Japanese Maple’ by Clive James, first published in the New Yorker, © Clive James, 2014