Thunder

Clive James wrote this poem while he was dying of leukemia and turning out poems by the bucket load.

This isn't a dark poem, but it shone for me today because my siblings had been chatting about our mother.

This is the eighth stanza of nine, and James, despite all his brilliance, is still hoping to make poetry his own.

If he's not confident in his work, you never will be.

And finally a poem, too, must render

Obeisance to the dark where it can shine

As only one more star, for no defender

Of this art, which I still hope to make mine,

Denies the overstock we're buckling under.

Yet the compulsion lives. Shaping a line

To mark the shock of recollected thunder,

I stitch the lightning into my design

Read the whole poem here.