Poetry 17 March 2016 “Imminent catastrophe”: a poem by Clive James “And though sometimes the weather is extreme / It seems no more so than when we were young. . .” Frederic Edwin Church Sign UpGet the New Statesman\'s Morning Call email. Sign-up The imminent catastrophe goes on Not showing many signs of happening. The ice at the North Pole that should be gone By now, is awkwardly still lingering, And though sometimes the weather is extreme It seems no more so than when we were young Who soon will hear no more of this grim theme Reiterated in the special tongue Of manufactured fright. Sea Level Rise Will be here soon and could do such-and-such, Say tenured pundits with unblinking eyes. Continuing to not go up by much, The sea supports the sceptics, but they, too, Lapse into oratory when they predict The sure collapse of the alarmist view Like a house of cards, for they could not have picked A metaphor less suited to their wish. A house of cards subsides with just a sigh And all the cards are still there. Feverish Talk of apocalypse might, by and by, Die down, but the deep anguish will persist. His death, and not the Earth’s, is the true fear That motivates the doomsday fantasist: There can be no world if he is not here. Clive James’s Gate of Lilacs: a Verse Commentary on Proust will be published in April by Picador. › It’s time for George Osborne to break his bad Budget habits and commit to investment Clive James (1939-2019) was an Australian author, critic, broadcaster and poet, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, his chat shows on British television and his prolific journalism. He contributed several original poems to the New Statesman. This article appears in the 17 March 2016 issue of the New Statesman, Spring double issue