Clive James in the New Yorker
Japanese Maple
This beautiful poem, Japanese Maple, by Clive James, in The New Yorker, has been going around Twitter.
Amazing how illness and the imminence of death seem to enhance the clarity of thought and word for so many, including Clive James.
It’s not exactly an upside but it helps us all feel closer to the experience and provides at least some means for us to empathise albeit just for the moment.
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 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.
By Clive James, From The New Yorker
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