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

metal, a blade. In this dark she groped,

Her fingers finding, as though told to find,

A shepherd’s knife, his. Over thunder: ‘Take the child’s

Life, if you must have a life’, and raised it.

But with fresh lightning came the right words:

‘Not a life. But a token of life. Not the body.

But flesh of the body that the body will not miss.

Will that satisfy you?’ And, in an impulse, drew

Taut the child’s foreskin and, with the sharp blade,

Cut. The child, maimed, screamed, clutched where blood

Flowed on to the flesh of the father, the loins and his father,

And the father stirred, groaning in air,

While blood dripped on the father. Then the father arose

And the child was in his arms, then in the mother’s arms,

Kissed, soothed, while the storm travelled on

And dark hid Horeb. So morning came,

Fresh after rain, with birdsong, and the child was sleeping.

They lay in love awhile, and after, in sad calm,

Zipporah said: ‘Today?’ Kissing her eyelids, he:

‘It has to be today. It has to be. Alone.’ She wept,

He comforted, and they rose as the day warmed.

At least it was a known way. Staff in hand, he

Blessed, awkwardly, a family that had done with weeping;

‘The blessing of the God of Abraham.

The God of Isaac. The God of Jacob. The God whom

Jethro has long sought. My love. My blessing.

The blessing of Moses. For what it is worth.’

And then: ‘We shall be together. In the

Time of the setting free.’ He turned and strode

Uphill to the solitary palm, blessing that too,

Then engaged the desert. But he already knew the desert.

It was Moses he did not know.

4

RETURN INTO EGYPT

Aaron dreamed of an eagle made of fire,

Consuming, unconsumed, swooping out of the sun,

Yet this time now, as in the other dreams, in the desert,

But here, in Pithom. And as it swooped, men ran

To hide their own long shadows. He awoke

To a relay of distant cock-crows. His wife Eliseba,

Eleazar his son, slept on. He lay, loving and troubled,

As the light advanced, dreading action, longing for action.

(Alive, at least they were alive, they could live out their lives.

No man could have everything.) Sighing, he arose,

And he took his dream to Miriam’s house, but she

Had left her pallet, earlier than he, her children

Undisturbed, happy in sleep. At least the children

Knew no other life. Was it right then to impose

The promise of long agony on them? Troubled, he walked

Down the street of the workers’ dwellings, open doors,

Bodies obscenely huddled, flies, ordure.

(Better the long agony, but still agony,

Still long, perhaps endless.) Where the slave town ended,

Miriam the widow cleaned out the bulrush cages

She had woven for doves, and the white doves throbbed around her.

Miriam the prophetess, as some called her, prophesying

The long agony, but then freedom, whatever that was,

Vigorous, laughing often, smiling now at her brother,

A question in her smile. ‘I saw him again’,

Aaron said, sighing. ‘This time as an eagle,

Flying almost above us here. No longer in the desert.

I knows what it means. It means he is close to us.

It means I must go to meet him. I know, I know.’

She said: ‘You still have too much doubt, like the others.

But for the others there is excuse. None remembers him.

Or, if he is remembered, it is in the wrong way –

A far-off hero who could tame snakes, who could

Strike men dead with a glance. Here once and hence,

They accept or half-accept, may come again.

But again is a future so far off as to be a

Sort of past. A past like the beginning of the world.

For us it is different. For our mother and father

It was different, though they had to die with the hope

Not yet bursting into dreams. Your dream is clear.

I have silver hidden in the house. We need to bribe,

Our overseer is bribable enough. You need to go

Over the river.’ He said: ‘Silver? Where from?’

And she, laughing: ‘Theft is too much virtue in you,

Virtue meaning timidity.’ Laughing, launching a dove

Into the light. He nodded, troubled, knowing it true:

Why was the long agony reserved for him

Who would have been content with quietness, or with words,

The action left to his son, or his son’s son?

So, when the work-day started, he trudged to the river,

The ferry just arriving, loaded with farmers,

A bull-calf snorting at a flutter of squawking hens,

The boat emptied, the ferryman, black, from the south,

His carven face swimming with light, swigged from a jug,

Sour-faced on a mouthful of sour wine. Aaron said:

‘Will you take me to the other side?’ – ‘Double fare.

A lot come into Egypt. Not a lot

Go out, as you see. It’s always double fare.’

Aaron said: ‘But you have to go back there anyway.’ –

‘Always double fare. Some are very glad

To be paying double fare.’ So it was double fare.

The ferryman was curious: why the journey? And then,

Incredulous: ‘A dream? You say a dream? You

Seek somebody because of a dream? Paying double fare too.

A dream?’ Aaron said: ‘There was a time

When dreams were considered important in Egypt.’

The boatman spat. ‘That was Joseph. The old days.

My grandfather told me about him. This is today.

All science today. Nobody follows dreams, not any more.’

Aaron said: ‘I do. There was a time

When I did not. But I follow this dream. I have to.’

The ferryman said: ‘Then you’re mad.’ Aaron spoke angrily:

‘I see. And the rest of the world bursts with sanity,

Is that it? Mad because I dreamed of the coming of

Salvation? The others sane because they are slaves –

Is that it?’ The boatman earnestly said (and would have

Laid a hand on Aaron’s arm had not his hands

Been engaged in rowing): ‘Never be taken in by

Words is what I say. Say that word slavery

And it sounds bad. Say instead a mouthful of bread

And fish and palm-wine for a day’s work and it sounds

A great deal better. Who is this one you’re going to meet then?’

Aaron told him. ‘Hear that, you fish down there?

He’s going to meet his brother and his brother

Is going to save the world. Look.’ (Earnestly,

Squinting at Aaron across the blinding river light.)

‘If you’re going to have salvation, as you call it,

It won’t be through your brother or my brother