I’ve selected this poem primarily because of an anthology, “The Fire of Joy” by Clive James (1939-2019). James was a wit, broadcaster, columnist, critic, and poet. As with so many people with multiple talents, it was being a poet that he valued the most. His anthology gave me huge pleasure. I found many familiar poems that I love but also new ones that appealed immediately. There is only one poem from each poet, and James adds brief, often very personal, notes on each.

“The Fire of Joy” is “roughly 80 poems to get by heart and say aloud.” James believes that “If a poem doesn’t sound compelling, it won’t continue to exist.” He believes as well that “the true mark of poetry: you remember it despite yourself.” You must know that. I remember mostly fragments of poems rather than the whole, which may mean that those fragments are when the poem is at its best.

The title of the book comes from the French “feu de joie” when soldiers fire their rifles into the air one after the other ideally so that the sound is continuous. For James the poems explode like gunshots.” He was dying when he compiled the anthology, and writes “For me poetry means freedom. Even today, in fact especially today when the ruins of my body are the prison, poetry is my way through the wire and out into the world.”

The poems in the anthology come in chronological order, and the third that James selects is written by a man like him facing death. “Elegy” by Chidiock Tichborne (1562-1586). Tichborne is about to be executed because he took part in a plot to kill Elizabeth I. Dr Johnson said that the prospect of death concentrates the mind wonderfully, and this simple paradoxical and beautiful poem bears that out. But James writes that he “found the opposite.” Perhaps it’s to do with just how close death is. Tichborne knew that he’d be beheaded in hours, whereas James was a very long, almost embarrassingly long, time dying.

Elegy

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares;
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain:
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard, and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seen:
My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death, and found it in my womb,
I looked for life, and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
The glass is full, and now the glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.