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Clive James RIP

Richard Williams has written a remembrance of Clive at thebluemoment.com. He got to know him in the early Seventies. There is a link to the poem Japanese Maple, which Clive wrote after his daughter bought him one.

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.

© Clive James, 2014

The irony is that the tree died before he did.
 
I've got a couple of the Pete Atkin albums, and thought I'd see what else I can download from Qobuz. All I can find there is The Colours of the Night. Despite my only asking for albums by Pete Atkin it then offers a whole load of stuff by someone called Fabp, followed by a Number of artistes I've never heard of. Is Tidal any better?
 
I've got a couple of the Pete Atkin albums, and thought I'd see what else I can download from Qobuz. All I can find there is The Colours of the Night.

That's all I found. There are a couple of Albums on Apple Music, I also subscribe to that, but that's all.
 
Me too. And the interview with Mary Beard, all the more poignant knowing now that he would be dead within the year. I really liked Clive James.
 
I like his sense of timing and his voice has a lovely music to it.

Agreed re Unreliable Memoirs being an excellent book, and a good introduction to his style. Quite easy to hear his vocal rhythm when reading his words.
 


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