Poetry 31 July 2019 The Floral Clock “though I grow so weak / I can no longer see, the flowers will speak / Their language, which is time made visible” Getty Sign UpGet the New Statesman\'s Morning Call email. Sign-up The winter bowed out through a luke-warm week And now the deal is sealed with this spring snow, Cold only in the way fluff cloaked the creek In that Kentucky canyon years ago: A lavish swansdown stole, but there below Melt-water burbled while guitars rang clean As banjos, sugar-sweet or fighting mean. It must be thirty years since I was there, Breathing that music while men tapped their feet On a floor that shook. I learned what women wear In heaven, saw their skirts swirl on the beat, The skip of strappy shoes. My, they looked neat. I ask you, did those girls not burn as bright As sprigs of dogwood brought in from the night? The dogwood was in bloom and still won’t die In my mind, which looks back along a blaze Of mirrors like that great hall in Versailles. Most of the permanence in these last days Of my life, of an orbit that decays, Is merely memory, but still holds fast Precisely for its roots in the far past. Here in my garden the camellias Blossomed too recently to be evoked Save with an effort. They are gone like stars Into the early dawn. Each bloom was stoked With pink brushed silk. They simpered as if stroked With pride at being lovely. Then the day Arrived when somehow they had gone away. High time to cherish my long memories Of frangipani next to our back door At home. My mother briskly waved the bees Aside to clip the flowers. After the war Each year our little cross was propped before The granite obelisk up on the hill As if our tortured Lord were wept for still. He was, he was, but tears had turned to blooms: White blooms with starry hearts of molten gold. Back at our house our cool dark dining-room’s Oak sideboard, prized because it looked so old, Held its own bowl of petals whose each fold Dripped wealth to mark the time of his return, Which would be never. Would they never learn? All flowers are water-clocks. They tell the time. Only the first we see are always there. When I was small the death-defying climb Of honeysuckle up into clear air Tempted my mouth. I taste it now. I share Those aspirations. Give me the sweet sky To hunger for as I prepare to die, And I, too, might be led to make a show Of striving heavenward. A pigeon’s beak That punches tiny holes in the fresh snow Has no more strength, but though I grow so weak I can no longer see, the flowers will speak Their language, which is time made visible. It thrilled me from the start. It thrills me still. From the 2 August 2019 issue of the New Statesman, this was Clive James’ last published poem. He died on 24 November 2019, aged 80. › Could the Liberal Democrats lose in Brecon and Radnorshire? 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 02 August 2019 issue of the New Statesman, Summer special