Japanese Maple - by Clive James

Clive James, dynamic Australian poet, writer & media-host, who is now dying of cancer in England, (and a wordsmith with a grace and appreciativeness for life, though not a man of faith in any afterlife) writes: "Usually you're looking for ideas. This idea was looking for me. When the thing was put in the earth it wasn't in leaf yet. It was a long way to autumn. My daughter told me that come autumn the whole thing would be bright brilliant red. She showed me photographs of what it would look like and I got the idea straight away.
The genius of the poem is in the half-line of every stanza, Put together, these half-lines sound like a man desperately short of breath, waiting for the autumn of his death, watching his daughter's planted tree fill with life while losing time, losing air. Breath growing short - wheeze - it never ends - wheeze - what must I do - wheeze- as my mind dies." - 'But Clive's autumn came, the tree bloomed and he lived. So every day is extra time. He's already gone beyond the beyond left him here..."
So here is his latest fine appreciation of his last earthly things. "The void is coming," he says, "It really is going to be a void. There isn't anything out there. There's no heaven, no hell. Heaven and hell are here with us now. There's nothing in there. You really are going nowhere. ". Clive makes no mention of a soul, As if he sees nothing else but mind. But he still seeks to be fulfilled in truth, seeks yet for redemption, maybe even for sanctification, for he admits illness has brought him to be shed of wrongs and conceits. Yet I find him still conceited in that he has such an assured view of what cannot be materially known, still so sure of what cannot be assured. I pray for him, please pray with me.

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JAPANESE MAPLE

- by Clive James, Australian poet

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.

So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath grows 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 you 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 colours 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.

-As published in the Weekend Australian Magazine, 28 March 2015