Clive James

Watching the Andrew Marr show on BBC at the moment and I am struck by what a dignified and humble man Clive James is. He has terminal cancer and has accepted his fate with quiet fortitude. He has gone from tv personality to poet and today he spoke of how he has confounded his own prediction of his imminent demise. He read out his poem entitled "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.


Beautiful.

Oh that is beautiful chirpyinsect, how very sad also

candyfloss wrote:Oh that is beautiful chirpyinsect, how very sad also

On watching him though he himself is not sad which was uplifting in a strange way. He says he suffers no pain and doubts he would be able to write if he did but he accepts that we all have to go sometime.
I grew up with his witty and acerbic take on life and loved his chat shows. Who could forget Margarita Pracatan?

I used to read his reviews in the Sunday papers and does anyone his New Year shows? One where throughout the year Tom Jones was mistaken for Gaddafi - and then his late shows. It was almost the only thing I ever bothered watching.

A clever man, already much missed in the media.

The poem is lovely, thank you for posting it.

I watched it too chirpyinsect and was very moved. I loved his pithy observations in his writings and TV programmes and as you say, who could forget Margarita? He's facing his death bravely and philosophically. How often must he have sat and reflected on his Japanese Maple?.

Requiem by Robert Louis Stevenson

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me;
"Here he lies where he longed to be:
Home is the sailor,home from sea
And the hunter home from the hill."


Scotsman Stevenson wrote his own epitaph and was happy to accept his death whenever it came.
Sadly Brenda Leyland was not afforded the same peace of mind .
R.I.P. Brenda

I love that poem and also Stop all the clocks by WH Auden.