Collected Poems :  Contents

Archive Editor’s Note

As with the Other Passports and Opal Sunset collections, all of the works included in this volume have previously been published in other collections of Clive’s verse. I have once again taken the decision to omit these titles from the Collected Poems section of the main (left-of-screen) menu, to avoid duplication. Instead I have generated this Contents page which indexes them all, each title acting as a clickable link to the page containing the relevant poem, catalogued (with some exceptions) under the publication first containing it. From there the ‘Fast Track’ blue buttons (bottom of page) will step you through the pages of that publication rather than this collection; should you prefer to stick with this Contents page your Web-browser’s ‘Back’ button will return you here.

The collection also contains two chapters of notes, on the poems and on the song lyrics. I have relocated each note to the foot of the associated poem or song-lyric page. The alphabetical indexes of titles and of first lines are not included here; they will be amalgamated with the alphabetical index of the entire Archive, in due course.

Early Poems :

As I See You
The Deep Six
Berowra Waters, New South Wales
The Morning from Cremorne, Sydney Harbour
The Lady in Mourning at Camelot
Four Poems about Porpoises
The Banishment
The Crying Need for Snow
The Glass Museum
The Young Australian Rider, P. G. Burman
A Line and a Theme from Noam Chomsky
The Outgoing Administration
Neither One Thing Nor the Other
Le Cirque Imaginaire at Riverside Studios

from The Book of My Enemy :

POEMS

The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered
Sack Artist
The Supreme Farewell of Handkerchiefs
A Gesture towards James Joyce
Thoughts on Feeling Carbon-Dated
Johnny Weissmuller Dead in Acapulco
Reflections on a Cardboard Box
The Philosophical Phallus
Egon Friedell’s Heroic Death
Homage to Rafinesque
Will Those Responsible Come Forward?
Echo Echo Echo
The Anchor of the Sirius
The Ferry Token
Funnelweb
A Valediction for Philip Larkin
Jet Lag in Tokyo
The Light Well
The Artificial Horizon
What Happened to Auden
Last Night the Sea Dreamed It Was Greta Scacchi
Drama in the Soviet Union
Budge up
Bring Me the Sweat of Gabriela Sabatini
Fridge Magnet Sonnets
Go Back to the Opal Sunset
Lament for French Deal
The Eternity Man
Reflections in an Extended Kitchen
In Praise of Marjorie Jackson
Simple Stanzas about Modern Masters
Son of a Soldier
Where the Sea Meets the Desert
The Lions at Taronga
Dream Me Some Happiness
Deckard Was a Replicant
Lucretius the Diver
One Man to Another
Stolen Children
Young Lady in Black
In Town for the March
Six Degrees of Separation from Shelley
Occupation: Housewife
Jesus in Nigeria
The Place of Reeds
Hard-Core Orthography
Flashback on Fast Forward

PARODIES, IMITATIONS AND LAMPOONS

From Robert Lowell’s Notebook
R. S. Thomas at Altitude
Edward Estlin Cummings Dead
Symptoms of Self-Regard
Richard Wilbur’s Fabergé Egg Factory
After Such Knowledge
What About You? Asks Kingsley Amis
The North Window

SELECTED VERSE LETTERS

To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
To Craig Raine: a letter from Biarritz
To Gore Vidal at Fifty
The Great Wrasse: for Les Murray at Sixty
To Leonie Kramer, Chancellor of Sydney University

from Angels Over Elsinore :

Windows Is Shutting Down
Angels Over Elsinore
Exit Don Giovanni
My Father Before Me
A Gyre from Brother Jack
Woman Resting
Sunday Morning Walk
Natural Selection
Under the Jacarandas
The Victor Hugo Clematis
Mystery of the Silver Chair
The Genesis Wafers
Museum of the Unmoving Image
Statement from the Secretary of Defense
The Australian Suicide Bomber’s Heavenly Reward
Diamond Pens of the Bus Vandals
The Zero Pilot
Iron Horse
Grace Cossington Smith’s Harbour Bridge
When We Were Kids
Only Divine
Lock Me Away
Bigger than a Man
Publisher’s Party
Literary Lunch
At School with Reg Gasnier
At Ian Hamilton’s Funeral
Press Release from Plato
Ramifications of Pure Beauty
The Serpent Beguiled Me
State Funeral
This Is No Drill
Fires Burning, Fires Burning
Yusra
Private Prayer at Yasukuni Shrine
Naomi from Namibia
William Dobell’s Cypriot
Ghost Train to Australia
Les Saw It First
Signed by the Artist
Return of the Lost City
Anniversary Serenade
Double or Quits
Overview
The Nymph Calypso
The Magic Wheel
Portrait of Man Writing
Status Quo Vadis
Meteor IV at Cowes, 1913
The Carnival
We Being Ghosts

from Nefertiti in the Flak Tower :

Signing Ceremony
Monja Blanca
Stage Door Rocket Science
A Perfect Market
Australia Felix
Oval Room, Wallace Collection
Against Gregariousness
Numismatics
Nefertiti in the Flak Tower
Spectre of the Rose
The Same River Twice
On A Thin Gold Chain
And Then They Dream of Love
Beachmaster
Continental Silentia
Language Lessons
Silent Sky
Special Needs
Pennies for the Shark
Butterfly Needles
Nimrod
Culture Clash
Fashion Statement
Paper Flower Maiden
On Reading Hakluyt at High Altitude
The Buzz
Dreams Before Sleeping
Incident in the Gandhi Bookshop Café, Avenida Corrientes
The Falcon Growing Old
Vertical Envelopment
Book Review
Whitman and the Moth
The Later Yeats
Habitués
Castle in the Air
A Spray of Jasmine
Madagascar Full-Tilt Boogie
Bubbler
A Bracelet for Geoffrey Hill
The Shadow Knows
Grief Has Its Time
Vision of Jean Arthur and the Distant Mountains
The Light As It Grows Dark
Plate Tectonics

from Sentenced to Life :

To Prue
Sentenced to Life
Driftwood Houses
Landfall
Early to Bed
My Home
Holding Court
Procedure for Disposal
Manly Ferry
Tempe Dump
Living Doll
Event Horizon
Nature Programme
Managing Anger
Echo Point
Too Much Light
My Latest Fever
The Emperor’s Last Words
Bugsy Siegel’s Flying Eye
Only the Immortal Need Apply
Plot Points
Asma Unpacks Her Pretty Clothes
Nina Kogan’s Geometrical Heaven
Star System
Change of Domicile
Rounded with a Sleep
Elementary Sonnet
Leçons de ténèbres
Winter Plums
Spring Snow Dancer
Mysterious Arrival of the Dew
Cabin Baggage
Transit Visa
Japanese Maple
Balcony Scene
Sunset Hails a Rising

Selected Song Lyrics :

The Master of the Revels
The Ice-cream Man
Stranger in Town
Nothing Left to Say
National Steel
I See the Joker
Sessionman’s Blues
My Egoist
Song for Rita
Senior Citizens
Shadow and the Widower
Payday Evening
Screen-freak
The Double Agent
A King at Nightfall
Apparition in Las Vegas
Be Careful When They Offer You the Moon
Touch Has a Memory
Frangipani Was Her Flower
The Rider to the World’s End
No Dice
Driving through Mythical America
Thief in the Night
Practical Man
Cottonmouth
Beware of the Beautiful Stranger
Have You Got a Biro I Can Borrow?
Laughing Boy
Sunlight Gate
The Faded Mansion on the Hill
Thirty-year Man
Carnations on the Roof
The Hypertension Kid
Perfect Moments
The Road of Silk
The Hollow and the Fluted Night
Secret Drinker
Search and Destroy
Tenderfoot
Care-charmer Sleep
Canoe
I Feel Like Midnight
Ready for the Road
Commercial Traveller
Urban Guerrilla
The Eye of the Universe
My Brother’s Keeper
History and Geography
Femme Fatale
A Hill of Little Shoes
Dancing Master
I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
Winter Spring