Lovely!
Stephen V
> The Collected Verse¹ of Clive James has been remaindered,
> or if not remaindered severely marked down.
> Not for me to rejoice, he is not my enemy,
> my rival nor even my lost leader,
> hero nor imaginary mentor,
> though some of his prose I wish I had written.
>
> So here I am at home with a cheap book,
> turning over the pages rather faster than I can read.
> Not much faster perhaps than they were written -
> or dictated, could it be? One thinks of Byron,
> jotting down a few stanzas while dressing for dinner -
> only Byron¹s lightness is truly debonair,
> and Clive¹s is burdened with the fruits and nuts
> and bolts of his omnicompetent curiosity.
>
> Still, the shop it was in wisely cares nothing
> either for poets or for their readers.
> My Clive was lucky to be stocked there in the first place.
> The Rolf Harris whom among others he serenades
> provides a clue- Clive, the Rolf Harris of modern verse?
> Moi? my book is not even printed, but -
> the book of Clive James is severely marked down.
>
> Peter Porter, his old friend, likes to say how Clive
> in his Thames-side apartment has installed an upper floor
> sprung for tango-dancing, Clive¹s private passion.
> Nimble, light-footed, lithe, rapid, sensuous,
> O to enact such manoeuvres in verse.
> The book of his poems, half-witty, half-tedious,
> spins away from me now wearily into oblivion.
>
> 10am, Wednesday 9 March 2005
>
> Max Richards
> North Balwyn, Melbourne
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