Clive james
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      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
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      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
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      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
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      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
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Home>>Poetry>>Poetry Collections>>Angels over Elsinore

At Ian Hamilton's Funeral

Picture
Another black tie invitation comes:
And once again, the black tie is the long
Thin one and not the bow. No muffled drums
Or stuff like that, but still it would be wrong
To flout the solemn forms. Fingers and thumbs
Adjust the knot as I recall the song
About the gang that sang “Heart of My Heart”.
Death brings together what time pulled apart.

In Wimbledon, a cold bright New Year’s Eve
Shines on the faces that you used to know
But only lights the depth to which they grieve
Or are beginning to. The body-blow
You dealt us when you left we will believe
When it sinks in. We haven’t let you go
As yet. Outside the church, you’re here with us.
Whatever’s said, it’s you that we discuss.

We speak of other things, but what we mean
Is you, and who you were, not where you are.
No-one would call the centre of the scene
That little box inside the big black car.
Two things we wish were true: you made a clean
Getaway, and you have not gone far.
One thing we’re sure of: now the breath is fled
You aren’t in there, you’re somewhere else instead --

Safe in a general memory. We file
Inside. The London literati take
Their places pew to pew and aisle to aisle
At murmured random. Nothing is at stake
Except the recollection of your smile.
All earned it. Who most often? For your sake
Men wrote all night, and as for women, well,
How many of them loved you none can tell.

Those who are here among us wear the years
With ease, as fine-boned beauty tends to do.
It wasn’t just your looks that won the tears
They spill today when they remember you.
Most of us had our minds on our careers.
You were our conscience, and your women knew
Just by our deference the man in black
Who said least was the leader of the pack.

Dressed all your life for mourning, you made no
Display. Although your prose was eloquent,
Your poetry fought shy of outward show.
Pain and regret said no more than they meant.
Love sued for peace but had nowhere to go.
Joy was a book advance already spent,
And yet by day, free from the soul’s midnight,
Your conversation was a sheer delight.

Thirsty for more of it, we came to drink
In Soho. While you read his manuscript
You gave its perpetrator time to think
Of taking up another trade. White-lipped
He watched you sneer. But sometimes you would blink
Or nod or even chuckle while you sipped
Your scotch, and then came the acceptance fee:
The wit, the gossip, the hilarity.

You paid us from your only source of wealth.
Your finances were always in a mess.
We told each other we did good by stealth.
In private we took pride in a success:
Knowing the way of life that wrecked your health
Was death-defying faith, not fecklessness,
We preened to feel your hard-won lack of guile
Rub off on us for just a little while.

That being said, perhaps I should explain
Why I eventually was seldom seen
In Greek Street. Fear of going down the drain
Was the main reason. Some of us turned mean
When we lost girls to you, but that was pain
Time’s poultice cured. Mere time would not have been
An antidote if I had stayed to match
You drink for drink. I had a train to catch.

Between men there’s no difference greater than
Their fear, or lack of it, of consequence.
For all your poise you were the desperate man,
The chancer. I, too short of common sense
To waste a drop, went back where I began,
Into the quiet life. Nietzsche’s intense
And dangerous existence was for you --
Your poems bullet-holes hell-fire shone through.

For lyric truth, such suffering is the cost --
So the equation goes you incarnated.
The rest of us must ponder what we lost
When we so prudently equivocated.
But you yourself had time for Robert Frost --
His folksy pomp and circumstance you hated,
Yet loved his moments of that pure expression
You made your own sole aim if not obsession.

Our quarrel about that’s not over yet,
But here today we have to let it rest.
The disagreements we could not forget
In life, will fade now and it’s for the best.
Your work was a sad trumpet at sunset.
My sideshow razzmatazz you rarely blessed
Except with the reluctant grin I treasured
The most of all the ways my stuff was measured.

Laughter in life, and dark, unsmiling art:
There lay, or seemed to lie, the paradox.
Which was the spirit, which the mortal part?
As if in answer, borne aloft, the box
Goes by one slow step at a time. The heart
At last heaves and the reservoir unlocks
Of sorrow. That was you, and you are gone:
First to the altar, then to oblivion.

The rest is ceremony, and well said.
Your brother speaks what you would blush to hear
Were you alive and standing with bowed head.
But you lie straight and hidden, very near
Yet just as far off as the other dead
Each of us knows will never reappear.
You were the governor, the chief, the squire,
And now what’s left of you leaves for the fire.

​Ashes will breed no phoenix, you were sure
Of that, but not right. You should hear your friends
Who rise to follow, and outside the door
Agree this is a sad day yet it ends
In something that was not so clear before:
The awareness of love, how it defends
Itself against forgetfulness, and gives
Through death the best assurance that it lives.

Poems

  • Meteor IV at Cowes
  • Overview
  • We Being Ghosts
  • Ghost Train to Australia
  • Yusra
  • Status Quo Vadis
  • Tramps and Bowlers
  • The Nymph Calypso
  • Angels Over Elsinore
  • Double or Quits
  • Natural Selection
  • Dreams Before Sleeping
  • Naomi from Namibia
  • Fires Burning, Fires Burning
  • Return of the Lost City
  • Portrait of Man Writing
  • Museum of the Unmoving Image​
  • A Gyre from Brother Jack
  • A City with Green Fingers
  • Diamond Pens of the Bus Vandals
  • When We Were Kids
  • Mystery of the Silver Chair
  • Private Prayer at Yasukuni Shrine
  • Sonnet After Wyatt
  • Paddington Departures
  • Les Saw It First
  • The Genesis Wafers
  • Literary Lunch
  • Exit Don Giovanni
  • At Ian Hamilton's Funeral
  • Press Release from Plato
  • You, Mark Antony
  • Lock Me Away
  • Young Lady Going to Dakar
  • State Funeral
  • Publisher's Party
  • The Zero Pilot
  • Iron Horse
  • Statement from the Secretary of Defense
  • Only Divine
  • My Father Before Me
  • The Magic Wheel
  • The Serpent Beguiled Me
  • Woman Resting
  • The Australian Suicide Bomber's Heavenly Reward
  • Windows Is Shutting Down
  • Anniversary Serenade
  • Belated Homage to Derek Walcott





Reviews of Angels over Elsinore

Independent
Prospect
Telegraph
Peter Stothard
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  • Home
  • Author
    • Profiles
  • Books
    • Unreliable Memoirs
    • Falling Towards England
    • May Week Was In June
    • North Face of Soho
    • The Blaze of Obscurity
    • Latest Readings
    • Cultural Amnesia
    • Play All
    • A Point Of View
  • Essays
    • Visions Before Midnight
    • The Crystal Bucket
    • Glued To The Box
    • The Metropolitan Critic
    • At the Pillars of Hercules
    • As of This Writing
    • The Meaning of Recognition >
      • Introduction
      • Polanski and the Pianist
      • Fantasy in the West Wing
      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
    • Guest Writers >
      • Zoe Williams
      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
  • Poetry
    • Poetry Collections >
      • Injury Time
      • Sentenced to Life >
        • Japanese Maple
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Event Horizon
        • Echo Point
        • Too Much Light
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries >
          • Poem of the Year
        • Parodies etc.
        • Verse Letters
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • Opal Sunset
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • Epic Poems >
      • The River in the Sky
      • Gate of Lilacs
      • The Divine Comedy >
        • Hell - Cantos 1-3
        • Purgatory - Cantos 1-3
        • Heaven - Cantos 1-3
    • Poetry Readings
    • Articles on Poetry
    • Back from The Web
    • Guest Poets >
      • Daniel Brown
      • Liane Strauss
      • Les Murray
      • Peter Porter
      • Alan Jenkins
      • Stephen Edgar
      • John Stammers
      • Simon Barraclough
      • Isobel Dixon
      • Christian Wiman
      • Olivia Cole
      • Judith Beveridge
      • Peter Goldsworthy
      • Kapka Kassabova
  • Lyrics
    • My life in lyrics
    • Selected Song Lyrics >
      • Dancing Master
      • Faded Mansion
      • Have You got a Biro I can Borrow?
      • I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
      • Hill of Little Shoes
      • History & Geography
      • I See the Joker
      • Laughing Boy
      • My Brother's Keeper
      • National Steel
      • Nothing Left to Say
      • Sessionman's Blues
      • Song for Rita
      • Stranger in Town
      • Sunlight Gate
      • The Egoist
      • The Eye of the Universe
      • The Ice Cream Man
      • Femme Fatale
      • The Master of the Revels
      • Thirty-year Man
      • Winter Spring
  • Video
    • Talking in the Library >
      • Series One
      • Series Two
      • Series Three
      • Series Four
      • Series Five
    • Postcards
    • CJ on YouTube
  • Radio
    • A Point Of View
    • Book Talk