Clive james
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Home>>Poetry>>Poetry Collections>>The Book of My Enemy>>Verse Letters>>To  Anthony Thwaite

To Anthony Thwaite at Fifty

Picture
Great folly it is to be afraid of death, since all of us alike must pay that debt.
- Aristophanes

​
Well, Anthony, by now the secret’s out
Of what this book is really all about.
The heavyweights have weighed in in your praise
With mighty line and lapidary phrase
Whereby both life and death are shown to be
Imbued with enigmatic majesty.
To celebrate your fifty years of life
The top scribes have been lined up by your wife
To send in something serious, hard-bitten,
Heart-felt and (with a good nib, please) handwritten,
These separate contributions to be sewn
Into a book which for its names alone
Should leave the average Festschrift looking bleak
And knocked into the middle of next week,
A synergistic donativum that
Should knock all others into a cocked hat.
With such wits to evoke the stern advance
Of Kronos I don’t think I stand much chance
Of adding anything in that respect.
Monuments of unageing iltellect
Have doubtless flooded in, all calculated
To leave you feeling slightly devastated
At how your trim form must perforce disperse
Eventually into the universe,
With random fragments of the quondam you
Attached to wisps of mist and drops of dew.
This leaves me feeling somewhat overparted
And vaguely wondering how to get started,
As well as worried that I’ve made a gaffe
By using this clapped-out Rapidograph
Instead of the italic pen or quill
Appropriate to orthographic skill:
The marks that this thing makes look thin and pale
And all in all I think I’m doomed to fail.
For deep thoughts and grave words I have no touch.
Qu’allais-je faire dans cette galère? Not much.
But why feign fear at what one does not see?
There might be virtue in necessity.
The grim view, though it must be the initial one,
Needs complementing from the superficial one.
Even to echo Horace’s Eheu
Fugaces I would have to find it true
And I just don’t. I like the way the years
Elapse, or anyway I shed few tears.
Perhaps I lack the mental wherewithal
To face the fact that one day night must fall.
Perhaps in smiling at it I’m ignoring it
When what I should be doing is deploring it.
But is one owning up to a soft head
Merely because one’s not consumed by dread,
And even finds a strange kind of relief
In hearing, far off, surf roar on that reef
To which, Lucretius says, all things must tend,
Exhausted by the flow of time? We end,
Said Pushkin, to make way for a fresh start
By others: let the newborn give us heart.
‘They crowd us from the world,’ he wrote, but not
As one who, scared of losing what he’s got,
Has really nothing very much to say
Beyond timor mortis conturbat me – 
He simply found it just, and not just certain.
The play of life should have a final curtain.
(In his case it fell on him like a ton
Of bricks right in the middle of Act One,
Which put the mockers on his flood of song – 
But still I think he was more right than wrong.)
‘Death joins us to the great majority,’
Droned Edward Young. No quarrel there from me.
‘Age,’ Bacon burbled, ‘will not be defied.’
A boring thought that will not be denied,
For fatalism, even as a platitude,
Remains the only reasonable attitude,
While if compounded with inventive verve
Its realism thrills your every nerve,
And has done since the Iliad was composed
(In braille – a fact not commonly disclosed).
Some thug on one of Homer’s battlefields
Lifts up his voice above the bonging shields
And what he bellows takes away your breath – 
And when you get it back you laugh at death.
‘The race of men,’ he half exults, half grieves,
‘Is like the generations of the leaves:
They fall in autumn to return in spring.’
A sentiment I find most heartening – 
As did, no doubt, the chaps he yelled it to,
And dropped their guard. (And then he ran them through.)
The duty you called ‘valuing the dust’
In your fine book Inscriptions (which I must
Say makes some of our newer bards look tired
Before their time, as well as uninspired)
Remains plain. As that Irish fellow says,
Man is in love and loves what vanishes – 
Except he left out one important thing:
A wise man learns to love the vanishing.
Good humour is the mark of those who do,
A virtue highly manifest in you –
Which might sound like an insult to all those
Who think a poet should write about crows
In tones undeviatingly devoid
Of any hint that life’s to be enjoyed.
So, Anthony: grow old along with me
And all your friends. The best is yet to be,
Simply because it hasn’t happened yet,
And what’s to come we never can forget.
It stays sweet till we get to it, at least;
The only wonder that has never ceased – 
And that’s a fact as certain as my name’s
(This line I’ll have to pad a bit) Clive James.

Reviews of The Book of My Enemy

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Independent
Telegraph, Alan Marshall
Telegraph, John Gross
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  • Home
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    • The Blaze of Obscurity
    • Latest Readings
    • Cultural Amnesia
    • Play All
    • A Point Of View
    • Flying Visits
  • 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
        • Sentenced to Life
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Leçons des ténèbres
        • Driftwood Houses
        • Event Horizon
        • Neuland
        • Echo Point
        • Change of Domicile
        • Holding Court
        • Too Much Light
        • Nature Programme
        • My Latest Fever
        • Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven
        • The Emperor's Last Words
        • Winter Plums
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse
        • Verse Letters
      • Opal Sunset
      • Other Passports >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Parodies etc.
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries
      • Fan Mail >
        • To Russell Davies: a letter from Cardiff
        • To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
        • To Pete Atkin: a letter from Paris
        • To Prue Shaw: a letter from Cambridge
        • To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
    • 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
      • Poem of the Year
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • 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