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

the accusation was naturally

Brought by the Crown. The Crown is still living.’

But Pharaoh said: ‘The Crown is he who wears it.

I hardly need my father’s dusty archives

As part of my inheritance. Is there a

Living accuser who does not wear a crown?’

‘Some Israelites,’ was the answer, ‘who swore that the

Accused was himself an Israelite.’ Pharaoh rose

And walked his council chamber among effigies, effigies,

Slaves following with fans. ‘I knew him. Moses. I

Remember him with some tenderness – an elder cousin

Who was always promising to take me hunting.

He would listen to bats and the cries of fieldmice.

No one else would hear them – only he. I cannot

Easily see him as a great vengeful lion, striking

Men dead with a rod.’ A minister said: ‘There

Was a death, majesty. An Egyptian corpse. Very bloody.’

‘Men,’ said Pharaoh, ‘are not, I think, beaten to death.

The beater must die of exhaustion first. So. It was

Officially I who sent him to Pithom and to this

Old accusation. Did I also send him

To death in the desert’? Another minister said:

‘There is no certainty of his death. At least

Two caravans have brought back news. News of a sort.

Of, for instance, a hero who came out of Egypt

And into Midian, killed twenty men with a blow,

Married seven or eight sisters – the exact number is unclear.

The name we heard seemed to be some

Outlandish deformation of his true name.’ Pharaoh smiled.

‘I would prefer him to be back with us. It would be

Good to see him smiling at my triumphs.

His smile was like none else’s – no fanfare of teeth.

It always seemed to hold back, to hold something back.’

And the first minister said: ‘So, majesty,

The sentence is quashed? The accusation cancelled?’

Pharaoh said: ‘Let us have him in Egypt again.’

But not even a king of Egypt could put time back.

Moses, the shepherd, with his, or Jethro’s flocks,

Dreaming under Horeb, dreamed of no future other than

A shepherd’s future. A husband and a father,

His wife, as was to be foreseen, the eldest, Zipporah,

His son named Ghersom, a strange name, apter for himself:

Stranger in a strange land. And the future? Well –

There was the taking of Jethro’s place, when the time came,

And the time could not be long. Problem of girls

Without dowries, a whole family cut off

From the idolators of Midian. He turned now to wave

As Jethro watching him, Zipporah, Ghersom in her arms,

Up there by the tents and the palm, rain-clouds behind them,

This being a place of rare rain, but of rain.

Jethro was saying to Zipporah: ‘Now you see how

A good shepherd works. First he takes to pasture

The very young, so that they may eat of the

Tender grass, full of juice, and then the older ones

That they may eat what is fitting for them, and last

The full-grown sheep that can chew the tough grass. All this

I did not teach him: he seemed to know it already.’

The child Ghersom cried, and Zipporah rocked him,

Singing: ‘Ghersom – Ghersom – stranger in a

Strange land.’ Her father said: ‘A gloomy lullaby.

A gloomy name. It rings somehow of his father.

Settled and not settled. Never quite at rest.

But a good son-in-law. An only son-in-law.’

In sad affection he turned his eyes to the other girls,

Washing clothes and squabbling. A good son-in-law,

Carrying a lamb to the desert for sacrifice,

The knife raised, Jethro intoning: ‘Unknown of the desert,

Great one, faceless, voiceless, we offer thee this

Fruit of the fertile lands. Accept it of thy goodness,

Eternal unity, whatever, whoever thou art.’ But the name

Moses, Moisha, Musa was no unknown of the desert.

The Egyptian patrols heard it among nomads, searching,

As they had been bidden, but long in finding.

Until at dawn, walking to birdsong, smiling he suddenly

Started, and she said: ‘What do you hear? I hear nothing,

Nothing but birdsong.’ But grasped his robe, rising,

And left the tent to see horsemen on the hill crest,

Egyptians. The daughters of Jethro welcomed them,

With yesterday’s bread, pitchers of well-water,

And their leader spoke to Moses, saying: ‘You have proof

That this is your name?’ Moses smiled and replied:

‘A name is merely. What a man is called. I am

Called Moses. My wife is called Zipporah. My son is

Ghersom. And here is my. Wife’s father. Jethro.’ –

‘The documents I hold’, said the officer, taking bread

With a desert courtesy, ‘are signed by the royal hand.

They attest your right to return to Egypt freely,

To resume your former status, former office.’

‘My status. And office. You see. I am a shepherd.

I am an Israelite.’ But the leader swallowed and said:

‘You are the Lord Moses, cousin to the Pharaoh.

As such, your place and duty are self-evident.

If I may say so. With respect.’ But Moses said:

‘You are not then come. To force me. Back to Egypt?’ –

‘I have no such authority. I am but the bearer

Of a royal message.’ And Moses spoke his last words to them

(They were welcome to rest. Then let them return to Egypt):

‘My compliments. To the Pharaoh. Tell him that I

Too have my kingdom.’ He left them, broke bread alone,

Then led his lambs to pasture. But that day

Was to be no common day. Tending his flocks,

He heard a sound from Horeb, a sound as of the

Manifold cracking of twigs in the fire, and he turned

To see the mountain melting, shifting towards him,

Then setting in its old shape: an illusion

Of a more than Egyptian kind, occasioned no doubt

By today’s voices from Egypt. But, peering, he saw

What seemed no magic: there on the upper slope

A flame that burned steady. Who had made fire on Horeb?

He left his lambs and, staff in hand, incredulous,

Moved to the mountain. The flame burned steady.

Its reality was somehow fixed in his brain by the

Smell of wool-grease on the hand that he lifted to

Shade his eyes from the light, to see better the

Flame that burned steady on the upper slope. So, slowly,

Driven solely by desire for a strange thing to be

No longer strange, he began to climb, and the climb

Hid the flame from him until, sweating, panting,

No longer a young prince racing over the delta,

He faced at length a boulder on the upper slope

And rounded, panting, the boulder and there he saw a

Flame burning steady but the flame calm as