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

laughed.

‘Because’, in thunder, ‘I tell you. And you tell them

That if they do wrong I will punish them, punish them.’ –

‘How will you punish them?’ – ‘I’ll swoop down from on high

Like a mountain-lion. I’ll crash like a thunderbolt.’

And one of the bolder children grasped the God-effigy

And chased the weak with it, crying: ‘Go on,

On your knees, bow down, bow down or I will

Clout you on the head.’ And a sickly child,

Grinning, abased himself to joyful laughter.

But then a voice of true anger, Koreh’s crying:

‘Stop! Stop that!’ Surprised by unabashed,

The puppeteer and the children: what wrong had they done?

Here came some official spoilsport. Koreh said:

‘You know the law. You know that there is to be no

Worshipping of graven images. And that means also

The pretence of worshipping –’ The puppeteer cried back:

‘Are there to be no children’s games then any more?’ –

‘I admit,’ admitted Koreh, ‘that the line is

Hard to draw. It will be drawn firmly when

He comes down. Meanwhile remember

What you have already been taught that there is

Danger even in children’s play.’ And he took the

Crude God of stone and hurled it, hurled it,

And the children looked at him with open mouths.

The law was a problem everywhere, on every level,

As Aaron found with the thieves arraigned before him,

Saying, calmly, clearly: ‘I am saying

Not that you stole as men steal in the

General way, the old way – from other men,

From this man or from that man – do you follow me? –

But that you stole from us all. The gold and silver

And jewels that the Egyptians gave to us,

Gave us to go away – do you follow me? –

Are the wealth not of one man, of one family,

Of one tribe, but of the entire people,

Of what we now call Israel.’ And the first thief,

Wall-eyed and hulking, said: ‘What you’re saying then

Is that we stole from ourselves. But how can people

Steal from themselves? Answer me that.’ And Aaron:

‘Listen carefully. Listen. A whole nation

Can own a thing in common – do you follow me?

Perhaps some public monument, some statue – ’

‘Some god, you mean?’ said thief, a youth

Golden, angelic. And Aaron: ‘I did not say that.

Some fine piece of craftsman’s work, shall we say,

That is set up in a public place, that would be

Seen and enjoyed by the whole people. It would be theft

For one man or three men to remove it. Now do you

Follow me?’ But the first thief said: ‘That gold,

Silver and stuff was shut away in a wagon,

And not very well guarded, if I may say so.

Anybody could have taken some, but it happened to be

Us. And it happened that one of these Midianites

Didn’t keep his mouth shut.’ Aaron turned to Caleb:

‘Not very well guarded, do you hear?’ And to the thieves:

‘What have the Midianites to do with it?’ The third thief said,

An upright clipped man, like a warrior:

‘They wanted to sell us palm-wine. As for us,

We wanted to buy it. We had nothing to buy it with.

Except sheep. But they said they had plenty of those.’ –

‘I see,’ sighed Aaron. ‘Caleb, sequester the palm-wine.

It belongs to the community. There may some time

Be occasion to celebrate something. As for you three – ’

And then he cried out in impotence: ‘Punishment, punishment –

What punishment can we give? By rights you should each

Have a hand cut off at the wrist. But who would be so

Foul as to order such bloody execution

And who so depraved as to do it? Nor can you be

Cast into prison. We are not a township –

We have no prisons. Throw you back to the wilderness?

That would be death, and theft hardly warrants it.

All I can say is that you must abide the

Coming of the covenant, the return of the

Ordained lawgiver. Be warned. You are free to go.’

So they went, and the voice of the clipped and upright

Warrior-looking thief could be heard some way off,

Mimicking Aaron, while the others laughed.

‘If I may speak,’ said Caleb – ‘Speak by all means,’

Aaron said, and Caleb: ‘We have here a nation

Of town-dwellers who have almost forgotten

That their forebears were herdsmen. It is hard to turn them so quickly

Into tenders of sheep again. They think of enslaving Egypt

As a land of fair cities. What have they, after all, here?

Goat’s cheese and sheep-fat, and that useless glittering hoard

Out of a fair land of fine craft and richness.

Melt it down.’ And Aaron started at that.

‘Melt it down,’ said Caleb. ‘We have men here wasted –

Men who have learned the crafts of smith and carver,

Brought down here to be mere shepherds. Melt the gold

And melt the silver and give them work to do.

Some effigy of skill and beauty that shall

Stand in the midst of the encampment. Some symbol of

The unity of the people.’ Aaron shook his head:

‘But this is no time for that. We are still waiting

To go to the lands we are promised, there to build our

Cities and fill them full of the craftsman’s work.

This is a time between times, it is not yet

Even an era of making. Except for the law,

The law comes first. We build first with law

And then out of stone and marble and metal.’ –

‘A very long time of waiting,’ Caleb said.

To many it feels that this is to be their life.

A life full of toil with nothing at all to look at

Save that sky and that mountain. He has been

A long time up that mountain. If, of course, he is

Still there.’ Glumly, both looked up

At the mountain. If he is still there.

‘Even he said that,’ said Aaron to Eliseba,

The following dawn, as they lay hearing the cock crow

And smelt the baking of bread. ‘Even Caleb.

The people are wavering, full of doubt. Some of them

Talk with regret of leaving Egypt. They forget so quickly.

They forget Moses. If he is still there, he said.’ –

‘Whether he is there or not,’ Eliseba replied,

‘You are here, you. The time is come, I think,

For you to rule.’ – ‘I do what I can’, said Aaron. –

‘And what you can do is to say either no or wait.

No more. Have they been asking you for gods?’