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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