The Light as it Grows Dark : The Last Poems of Clive James

To be a long time dying is largely a phenomenon of modern medicine.The Light As It Grows Dark is reportage from this new country; hard-won revelations about the journey’s end: ‘This insane last phase/ When everything about you goes downhill.’A poet long before he was a journalist or broadcaster, Clive James was 70 when his health irretrievably broke down, and his world contracted to a single book-lined room looking out on a small walled garden.Every detail in this restricted orbit seemed to be filled with meaning, and he found that once again poems began, unstoppably, to flow. Admitting fear and resisting self-pity, he meditated on the nature of life when its end is in view. ‘The light as it grows dark has come for you / to comfort you . . . Your life has turned to look you in the face.’A capstone to James’s extraordinary career, The Light As It Grows Dark is a wry, tender, unsentimental companion for all those who will find themselves, at some point, towards the end of their lives, which is to say for all of us.