The poem is called 'Japanese Maple', and has been inspired by a tree that his daughter had bought for him. Published in the New Yorker, it's being called James's last work.
Japanese Maple
“Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:
Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?
Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.
My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:
Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.”
What gives “Japanese Maple” so much of its throat-catching grace are its gentleness, resignation, and images that somehow achieve the emotional resonance of hard-earned wisdom. In reminding us that in autumn the leaves turn to flame and fall, he has also reminded us that the tree continues on and with the spring a new cycle begins.
His gift of prose will live beyond the span of his life.
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