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

one. ‘I somehow doubt

That you’d get away with it.’ – ‘Well,’ Dathan said,

‘I’d rather drunk this than drink that smoke that the

Young ones drink, snuff up rather, that grass that grows

By the wall. Visions of golden cities,

That’s what it’s said to give you. Men of my age,

It makes us sick’. Dathan’s wife tipsily sang:

‘Where will our wedding breakfast be?’ – ‘I’d rather,’

Dathan said, ‘drink this than take that smoke stuff’.–

‘Some of the tribe of Judah,’ said the soldierly thief,

‘Mash up dates and add honey and water. It bubbles,

Bubbles you know.’ – ‘I suppose it’s against the law,’

Said the angelic thief, his gold hair moon-ensilvered. –

‘Nothing,’ Dathan said, ‘is against the law,

Because there is no law. It has to be written down,

Then it becomes law. Not that anybody can read it,

Except those that pretend they can. The bondage

Of unintelligible signs. That is well put,

Remember that.’ And Dathan’s wife went: ‘Unin-

Telligibubble.’ – ‘He’s coming down soon’,

Said the soldierly thief. ‘Still, I suppose it’s

Time we knew where we stood. Then we get the law.’ –

‘We ought to have a sort of celebration,’

Dathan said, ‘not when he gets here, but before.

I suppose he’ll have a law against celebrations,

All nicely carved out.’ – ‘What will we celebrate?’

Asked the angel. – ‘Oh’, said Dathan, ‘we’ll think of

Something or other’ – ‘Rother,’ giggled his wife.

But it was not till the new moon that something or other

Got into the people, helped by palm-wine, date-wine.

Some drunken women were singing Miriam’s song

About the effigy:

His strength is the strength of the bull that charges in thunder,

His wonder is in the flow of the seed of men.

Again and again, above in the sky and under

The sky, in gold noon and the moon’s gold,

His power and wonder are told.

Halleluiah halleluiah.

Some of the young sang their marriage song, and others

Drank smoke, while some of their elders kept to date-wine,

Date-wine. All very harmless: the young dancing about

The effigy, the old clapping their hands

To the rough music. Harmless enough perhaps

The fixing, by drunken women, to the effigy’s loins,

And Dathan swinging grinning with a pair of pomegranates.

But then the calf was jerked, to cheers, from its plinth,

Brought down to strong young shoulders, carried about

In song, while the tremulous old touched it, praying

For an end of the journey, for all to go well. Song

And a claw-buttock dance behind it, one young girl

Shedding her garments one by one in the dance,

Then by two young men, screaming and laughing.

Aaron and Miriam were far from all this, tending

A sick child in a distant tent, Aaron saying

(And the child was the child who had had the vision) to the mother:

‘The fever must come to its height. And then, we hope,

He will grow cool again. Give him nothing to drink

But bathe his forehead.’ – ‘Listen,’ Miriam said.

He listened, both listened. ‘So’, she said, ‘it is come.

God help us.’ They hurried, meeting on the way

Grave members of the tribe of Levi: We can do

Nothing. We always knew it was a

Grave mistake. Graven images. Aaron saw,

Miriam saw a woman, near naked, on the ground,

And the calf’s phallus in pretended hammering rut,

The calf in strong arms, and cheers and cheers,

The old, clawing buttocks, dancing, men and women,

Men and men, in a dance mime of sodomy,

The young, mad on the smoke they had drunk, dancing

Crazed dances of their own, a hugely corpulent

Sot draining, to cheers, a carboy of palm-wine,

And Caleb, crying for order, sense, near-trampled,

And other Levites brutally stricken with staves.

‘God help us,’ Miriam said. ‘You see what it is –

They are back to the worship of – Wasted, all wasted.’

‘I will speak to them’, Aaron said. ‘Let me mount the

Plinth.’ (Was that woman Zipporah, was that

Zipporah?) An obese matron, naked,

Pig-squealed, pleasured by a skeletal youth. Aaron smote,

Smote with his stave, mounting. ‘Listen,’ he cried.

‘Listen.’ And a few turned and groaned and cheered.

‘Brothers and sisters – children of Israel – listen.

Return to your dwelling at once, under pain of death.

Sin, sin – the Lord sees – the Lord will strike.’ Cheers,

And many were swift to drag him down, drowning his shouts,

Stripped him, thrust a jug of wine to his

Shouting mouth, dragged him into the throng.

(Far above, on Horeb, Joshua,

Tending his night fire, thought he heard revelling,

Riot, war. He turned to the cloud, heard a

Stronger noise of hammer and chisel on stone,

And a kind of – or did he imagine it only? –

Disheartened thunder.) Dancing, rutting,

The disrobing of a screaming boy by men who

Slavered in lust. Lust, drunken fighting,

And Dathan, drunk, screaming ecstatic: ‘There has to be

A sacrifice, the god wants a sacrifice’ pointing

Among cheers and growls to a trembling girl. Miriam

Stood in Aaron’s place, hardly heard: ‘Cannot you

Understand? This is another kind of

Slavery. God, the true God, sees all and will punish

Terribly. Turn away from your sin before it is

Too late.’ A cloud covered the thin moon,

And some, in slow fear, looked up. ‘A sign,’ she cried.

Then the cloud passed. ‘Cease your wickedness.

God will forgive, God will understand.’ But they

Dragged her down, stripping and beating her, lifting

The battered dull gold effigy to its old place,

Holding the terrified naked girl beneath

A jagged slab, while a gross lout as priest

Prayed gibberish to the calf – O guk O guk

Bondage of unintelligibubble. Gaaaaaar!

And he raised the knife and plunged, plunged

Till he was tired of plunging. Horror, awe,

Joy. He covered his arms and head with blood,

He daubed the loins of the calf in it, and now

The calf surged about, dripping in blood,

Anointing their own loins. They brought a boy,

Already stunned with a sharp rock, and rent him,

And some drank the blood and chewed and spat out

The rent flesh. (A drunk made slobbering love

To a woman equally drunk, and, equally drunk,

Another man wrestled with him in jealousy

And then took a stone and spilled his brains.

All brains and blood about them, he and she

Made slobbering love.) The dull gold effigy

Was everywhere daubed with blood and brains and seed

And, like red seed, blood dripped from its loins.

Battered and sobbing, Miriam crawled to her tent

And found Eliseba there, and the children, safe,

But where was Zipporah? The moon was setting.

The faintest dawn-streaked flushed. And high on