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

in a day or so, of the petitions.

A royal pavilion, with pennants, a throne, effigies,

Trumpeters, drummers, the whole court in attendance,

On a bank where the Nile narrowed, the water muddy,

Turbulent over a bed of slippery stones.

And on the opposed bank the suppliants,

With petitions for the Pharaoh, waited in the heat,

Swatting flies with palm-fronds. Aaron and Moses

Waited with them. After hours of waiting,

Trumpets sounded, and a herald spoke:

‘Whatsoever person desires to present his

Petition to the most sacred majesty of the Pharaoh,

The divine Mernefta, must do so as follows. He must

Step into the sacred waters and be purified.

Thus purified, he may proceed to the royal shore.’

Trumpets, then trumpets, drums, cymbals as

Pharaoh himself, well-attended, came to his throne.

On his throne, he saw many eyes quick to avert themselves

From blinding majesty, but the eyes of Moses

Were not averted. The suppliants entered the water

And, as was foreseen, stumbled, slithered,

Crawled back again, some, to their own bank,

While the court grinned, laughed when one old man

Had to be saved from drowning. Pharaoh smiled,

Perhaps dutifully, but he did not smile

When Moses and Aaron, upright among the slitherers,

Trod the river-bed towards him, Aaron crying:

‘Pharaoh… We humbly request… that your majesty

Accede to our…’ The king signed to the herald,

And the herald signed to the captain of trumpeters,

And the trumpeters blasted forth, so the words of Aaron,

Save for ‘strike’ and ‘punish’ and ‘revenge’,

Were smothered, and all speech and laughter smothered

When the drums and cymbals added their clamour. The eyes of Moses,

The eyes of one who had foreseen all, held steady

And now Pharaoh avoided them. But those eyes turned,

Again as one who had foreseen, upstream where a

Man cried soundlessly, and the eyes of Pharaoh

Followed. The man was as though painted red,

And viscous red ran from him and he shouted.

Pharaoh stilled the clamour of the silver and skin,

And the shout was heard: ‘Blood. The water has turned to

Blood.’ Laughter, and then not laughter.

For red was tumbling, sluggish at first, downstream,

Then bubbling over the stones, and the smell

Was, without doubt, the smell of blood. Moses and Aaron

Stood as it surged about them, let the others,

Terrified, crying It’s blood blood the water has

Turned to blood, slither and stumble out, stood till

Pharaoh himself came down to the river-verge and

Dipped his hand in. Blood. His eyes found the eyes of Moses,

And they said, surely: ‘Clever, cousin Moses.

But no more clever than my own

Magicians can do.’ And then they looked on blood.

Servants rushed with towels, wiping off the blood

From the royal hand, throwing the towels in

Blood, the towels filling with blood, floating sluggishly,

While the cry of blood blood went on, and Moses and Aaron

Strode through blood, their backs to Pharaoh,

Back to their bank. And now, all along the Nile bank,

The cry or scream was blood, and in the fountains

Blood seethed and frothed, but in the wells of Pithom

Water sang clear. Then, from the waterways

Which were now boiling bloodtides, the frogs came croaking,

Blood on their skin, frogs countless, in droves,

With a deafening croaking, on to the land, advancing.

Water blood, and the land all frogs, then the air

Filling with gnats, beasts and men

Thrashing and screaming, the sky black with gnats.

At the core of maddened Egypt, fires burning

To keep off the gnats, in a gauze tent

In a room of the palace, the chief magician used words,

Reasonable words, to calm the ministers, saying:

‘Maintain, my lords, a scientific approach.

Approach by way of reality, by observation,

Analysis, never by way of theory. You ask:

Is it blood? If blood, whose blood? I reply:

That is not to the purpose. The substance, true,

Behaved like blood, smelt, tasted like it.

Whose blood? That is no question for the

Physical investigator. Think now. There are records

Of mud-pollution on the Nile, followed inevitably

By an immediate exodus of creatures that live

And breed in clear water. Swarms of frogs and gnats –

Inevitable. We may expect also flies, locusts,

A murrain on the cattle – all stemming from

The pollution, by whatever cause, of the river.

You ask: is the blood, or whatever it is, a product

Of thaumaturgical conjuration? I say in reply:

The term has never been adequately defined. Miracle,

Magic – what do the words, scientifically considered,

Really mean? But, my lords, we have to remember

That this perverse and defecting Moses is, by upbringing,

Education, an Egyptian. He has had, doubtless, access

To obscure lore which, in this age of stability

And power, has never had to be invoked

Against enemies. To talk, as some are doing,

Of the magical potency of a new god, a god moreover

Of an enslaved people, is, to say the least,

Premature. Again, you ask: how is it that the

Israelites remain immune from these – nuisances?

The reason, my lords, may well be geographical.

Goshen, remember, is some way from the Nile,

Sheltered, removed from the causative pollution.

How dark it is getting.’ It was true.

They peer through their mesh at thickening air. Flies.

Thick, black, buzzing irritably, flies.

Clouds of flies. But none in Pithom. There

Aaron addressed the elders, saying: ‘The signs are before you.

Can you harbour further doubts? I know, I know

It is hard to take in. The God of the universe

Has chosen a people weak, enslaved, hopeless,

Indolent.’ – ‘Chosen for what?’ said one. And Aaron:

‘For the working out of his divine purpose on earth.

So it would seem. We must not ask too much.

What we must rather do is gird our loins,

Prepare for the coming of the day.’ But an elder said:

‘The day, you mean, of leaving a bondage that has become –

Well, all that some of us have known. We are old.

It is hard to face the new life. It is a hard God,

This God of yours, ours.’ But Aaron cried:

‘We must learn to think of ourselves as a people,

Not as mere tribes, families, lone beings with

Individual sufferings. Many of us

May be discarded on the way – worn-out, useless –

But the people goes on, the race continues. They that

End the journey may not be those that began it.

We are all one, and the dead and the yet unborn

Share in the common purpose, the common goal.’

And one said: ‘I don’t like this sort of talk at all.

It’s all blown-up, like a sheep’s stomach full of wind.

Life is, life is what we see, smell, feel –

The