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

a slave.

Or cattle. Or sheep. We can discuss the details now.’

But Moses cried: ‘No! No! We cannot and must not

Value human life in terms of possessions.

For human life is precious and irreplaceable

And cannot be treated as a kind of money. So I say again:

What is the punishment for murder?’ The leader of Reuben

Said, cunningly as he considered: ‘If we cannot

Put a value on human life, then we cannot

Compute the punishment.’ And Moses answered: ‘That is

Right. And yet also wrong. For human life

Can be valued only in its own terms. So I say:

A life for a life. Which means: a death for a death.’

The silence was full of fear, and Joshua spoke

To break the silence, resolve the fear: ‘How shall the

Murderer – What I mean to say is: how

Is it to be done?’ Moses answered, sighing:

‘Joshua, Joshua, to think of that now. Did you suppose

I intended his immediate execution for

His life is still a precious life.

The judges of his guilt must, as I see it,

Learn to revel in their own confusion, thinking:

Did he do it or did not? Can the witnesses

Be trusted? Did not perhaps the dead man

Drop dead in fright when he saw the knife approaching?’

And he looked on the butchered body and trembled, saying:

‘You have hardly begun to conceive, any of you,

Of the preciousness of a human life.’ Of this he spoke

To Jethro, in the pasture below Horeb,

Soothed by the old shepherd’s trade, and Jethro said:

‘Give them the law, then delegate, delegate.

Change now, now. This will not do,

This wearing out of one poor brain and body

In the service of so many. Organise, delegate.

And first, get rid of your hereditary chiefs.

Heredity is not enough, it does not of necessity

Qualify a man to rule. Then remember this:

The basis of good government is the ten,

The ten, the ten. Good junior officers –

Each one in charge of ten. Then senior officers,

Each one in charge of fifty. Then you climb

The ladder – very good men charged with a hundred.

And then at last the cream – the superb, the

Incorruptible leaders of a thousand.

God-fearing men, trustworthy, humorous,

Preferably young men. There is no great virtue in age.’ –

‘Men like Joshua, you mean,’ Moses said.

‘He is one who carries the new fire.

But first I must tend his fire for him. Also,

Warm my own hands by it.’ – ‘Joshua?’

Jethro said. ‘Is he married?’ Moses said not,

And Jethro sighed with a faint hope. ‘All this,’

Moses said, ‘will strike them as – subversive.’ –

‘Good,’ said Jethro, ‘good.’ – ‘Something like the

Organisation of an army.’ And Jethro: ‘So it is. You

Are an army. But an army of human souls:

Let none forget that. You will be fighting

Your way towards this land of milk and honey.

The zest is all in the fighting. It will be a long time

Before the cows and goats are born that will yield that milk,

And for that honey – the bees must gather. A bland diet,

Very bland.’ And then the mountain shook,

As out of sleep, and Moses said: ‘It sounds

As if I am to be summoned. Ah, God help me.’

Jethro smiled. ‘That, my son, is a prayer

You will be able to deliver in person.’ And Moses smiled,

And looked towards the rumbling of the mountain.

That day, with pain, he climbed it, saw the bush

That had once burned, but this time heard the voice

Come from the very peak, saying: ‘Say this

To the house of Jacob, this to the people of Israel.

Say: If if if you will obey my voice

And keep my covenant, you shall be to me a

Kingdom of priests and a nation of holiness.

But the choice is theirs, the choice, I say, is theirs.

And if they choose this covenant with me,

Then let them spend two days in the holy rites

Of purifying themselves. On the third day

I will come in a thick cloud on the mountain top.

What I speak with you the people shall hear,

And may also believe you for ever. And the words of the covenant

Shall be set down on stone imperishable,

That they may be beheld by the eyes of men.’

The peak was silent, and so Moses descended

To the world of his waiting people, bidding craftsmen

Prepare two tables of stone for the covenant, speaking

Patiently, but with no hesitation,

No sense of the words being whipped from him, to his leaders:

‘Thus I leave to you the duties of

Administering, of ordering, or judging.

The task which will long absorb my time,

My energy, and such poor brains as I have,

Will be the task of making the law of our people,

The law you will administer. The law

Is like the blood-channels of the body, or shall I say

That first there are the great trees of blood,

And then the numberless branches and twigs. It is the

Trunks that we must think of first, the solidities

Which even the weak of sight can see. The branches

And twigs can come later. First, we must remember

That the great laws come from God. They are the laws for all men,

And yet they are laws the world has not seen before.

But I say this to you, that so long as men shall live –

In freedom, unoppressed – it is on such laws

That their lives must be based. They must know that

These laws are sanctified by the Lord himself,

And they must see the ground from which the great trees spring

As the godhead that sustains them. God is not a

Demon of the rivers, or of fire or air.

He is not a stone idol – he is a spirit,

And it is as spirit that men must worship him.

So there shall be no making of gods of stone

or wood or iron or silver. Nor shall the name of God

Be thrown in the air like a ball or kicked like a pebble.

The very name is sacred and its use shall be sacred.

The day of rest, which is God’s day, shall be sacred –

Given to the contemplation of the eternal,

While the body rests from labour. It shall be a day

For the family, and the family itself

Shall be seen on that day as sacred. Nay, the family

And the bond of marriage, and the children that are

The fruit of that bond – shall always