Collected Poems Anthony Burgess (best pdf reader for ebooks txt) 📖

stubborn people. A very alien people.’

Dust and sun and travel. Birds screaming.

But, in a hovel in Pithom, a woman screaming.

The workers passed to work, shrugging, an Egyptian

Overseer claiming his rights from a woman of Israel,

Wife of a slave, what could they do? Still – cuckold.

Always a hard word. But what could the cuckold do?

The cuckold, Dathan, inclining to the side of the rulers,

Hence a foreman of workers, opened his own door

To see himself being cuckolded. Inclining to the side

Of the rulers, but showing truculence. The overseer

Looking up, grinning, from the bed, the frightened wife,

To say: ‘You should not be here, should you, Dathan?’ –

‘It seems not,’ said Dathan, ‘but I have certain rights.’ –

‘No rights, Dathan.’ – ‘Not even the right

To report to my superior official? Officially?’ –

Grinning, ‘Not even that right. You will report

When you are officially ordered to report. In the meantime,

You have duties to carry out.’ And Dathan, truculent:

‘Duties to my manhood.’ The Egyptian laughed at that,

And rose from Dathan’s bed, though lazily, saying:

‘Only free men can talk of manhood. What does Dathan

The unfree have to say?’ And the unfree: ‘Straw.

The straw has arrived.’ The overseer: ‘Oh,

Use some of your own. Man of straw.’ The hands of Dathan,

As of their own, were on to the ravisher,

Slid, sweating, on the tunic near the neck. Teeth gritted.

Teeth grinned: ‘An example, little Dathan.

An example is required. Would you not say so? An example.’

On the worksite, where the Israelites slapped mud into brick-forms,

All eyes looked up in a sort of relief (relief at the prospect of

Change in any shape, even change for the worse)

At arriving hooves. Gold, snorting horses, Egyptians.

Whips cracked, work you dogs and so on, they were used to whips.

Miriam the woman was bringing water in a jar. She too looked up

And her brother Aaron, a man now, or slave, drinking, too

Looked up at an unknown voice. An Egyptian prince

But not quite an Egyptian, the voice hopping like a bird

Not clanking like endless metal: ‘Is not this man

Too ill to work?’ And an officer, idly swishing a fly-fan;

‘He is not too ill to work he is still working.’

And the prince saw, frowning, the lashed back of another,

Asking: ‘What is this?’ And the worker replied:

‘It is what might be termed an inducement to increased effort.’ –

‘You speak like a scholar. Are you a scholar?’ –

‘I was a scholar of sorts. When scholarship was allowed.’

Aaron and Miriam looked at each other. Was it not perhaps

Just possible that – The prince said: ‘Their quarters.

I will see their. No. Alone. I will go alone.’ So it was

That, alone on the Pithom street between the hovels,

The women looking up curious, the children following,

Moses heard pain and the crunch of a rod. He opened a door

On to a naked man held by two men, grinning, Israelites

All three, and a sweating overseer, panting, punishing,

The man howling, a woman sobbing on a bed. The overseer,

Seeing an Egyptian aristocrat come in, smirked

With an air of virtue and smote hard: Dathan howled.

Moses cried: ‘Stop. What is this?’ Paused, panting, saying:

‘Punishment. My lord. For inefficiency. For insolence.

For insubordination.’ And raised the rod. Dathan: ‘For

Not. Wanting. To be a.’ The rod fell, he howled. Moses:

‘You. Assistants. Are Israelites?’ And the overseer panted:

‘They are Israelites, my lord. This is their foreman.

They naturally have no love for their foreman. Now.

If you will permit me.’ And he raised, and the hand of Moses,

To the surprise of Moses, rose and grasped the rod,

And the mouth of Moses, to the surprise of Moses, said:

‘I gave an order. I said stop. I call that also

Insolence. Insubordination.’ And Moses, to the surprise

Not only of Moses, leapt from a rock into a

Gorgeous sea of anger, beating beating, following the

Crawling stupefied beaten about the floor, beating.

The Israelites watched with pleasure different from

Their former pleasure, Dathan bled in pleasure but

Shock crowned the pleasure: this surely was what was the word

This was insanity. Without the door women listened,

Children, old men, young men coming off shift,

Screams and beating but soon no more of either,

Only breath sharply intaken and a desperate sobbing

For breath from one. And, within, that one

Dropped the rod, looking narrowly, saw then about him

Eyes not narrow at all, the women’s eyes especially

Wide in incredulity, then found breath to, to his surprise,

Excuse the beast that had possessed and was now departing:

‘It was. Too much. But a. Man does not.

Die of a beating. His heart stopped. His heart

Suddenly stopped.’ And Dathan, to the two

Who had held him: ‘My time will come for you. Friends.

Now back to work. This is none of your concern.’

They shuffled. ‘I have things to remember, have I not?

Bloody things. Quick to leave, leaving the door wide,

Shocked faces to look in, elation, fear, feelings

Not easily definable.’ Dathan: ‘You killed him, you.

You will go away and say that I did it.

They will all say that I did it.’ But Moses, calm now:

‘No one killed him. His heart suddenly stopped.

But the responsibility. Is mine.’ He then, addressing the clamour:

‘You see a dead Egyptian in your midst.

But you have no cause. For fear. The

Blame will not. Be visited on you. He was

Killed by his own. Brutality. His heart burst.

Have no fear.’ An old man, near-blind, said: ‘I’d say that

It was a strange thing to hear an Egyptian lord

Speak against brutality. Who are you, young man, who

Speak of Egyptian brutality?’ And at last in Pithom

It was heard aloud at last: ‘My name is Moses.’

And he thrust through them, man of authority, yet drawn

In a way he could not yet explain to himself

To these vigorous slaves. Moses. The crowd handled it,

Rang it like a coin, tasted it, the corpse bloody on the floor,

The killer at large, the police pushing in: ‘Who did it?

Who saw?’ ‘I saw, I saw, his name is Moses.’ ‘The prince Moses?’

This is nonsense, an Egyptian slaying an Egyptian

In the presence of slaves. But, in her father’s house,

Miriam, ecstatic, spoke: ‘Moses. It has come true.’

Aaron, far from ecstatic, carper and doubter,

Said: ‘Nothing has come true. Except that

What seems to you a beginning is really an end.

All Pithom talks of him already as