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

Moses had laid his hands upon him,

And the children of Israel hearkened unto him,

And did as the Lord commanded Moses. Joshua

Raised his blessed hand, and they fared forward,

Coming at length to a river. Caleb said:

‘At last.’ But Joshua: ‘We still have to cross it.

God will provide. This is only a river

Once we crossed a sea. Well – we have our orders.’

He smiled, and Caleb smiled, and so they marched.

And then at last, the voice spoke to Joshua:

‘Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore, Joshua

Go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people

Unto the land which I do give them. From the wilderness

Even unto the great river, the Euphrates,

And unto the great sea toward the going down

Of the sun. And as I was with Moses,

So will I be with thee: I will not fail thee,

Nor forsake thee. Be therefore not afraid,

Neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God

Is with thee whithersoever thou goest.’ The wilderness

Held a grave, but none would know the grave.

Not from the grave but from the living air

And the beating blood of Israel the voice

Of the living Moses echoed: For the Lord

Thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

Rome,

March 9, 1974

POEMS WRITTEN FOR ST WINEFRED’S WELL

‘And If There Be No Beauty, If God Has Passed Some By’

WINEFRED:

And if there be no beauty, if god has passed some by

In beauty giving, what then? Hare lip, wall eye,

Limbs shrunken? Beauty’s giver will be blind to them,

Will cast them to the pit. What then?

Beauty is in the doing, beauty is not being

As for what you speak of – shining hair, feel of primrose skin,

For what they are, for what I have of them,

Were they but in my gift, you should have them freely.

‘Talk is Easy. Easiest for One Who’

OTHER WOMAN:

Talk is easy. Easiest for one who

Would madly shut them away,

Consign them to darkness

You speak of beauty in the ghost!

I would have beauty in the flesh.

I am not yet a ghost.

‘Thank You. Enough, Brother Teryth’

BEUNO:

Thank you. Enough, brother Teryth,

Please no ceremony.

My Lord Bishop to the world I may be.

Here I am back to being a boy with you.

In this farm of our father’s, the smell of that burning pearwood

Burns the years between – cancels Rome, Paris,

The learning that has bent my back – the laying on of hands,

the pastoral crook and mitre.

Am come home for ever, but – alas –

Only by proxy. Dirwan stays for the building of a chapel,

A centre for holy mass.

No more long trudging to Caws.

‘I Choose No Tail or Toy!’

WINEFRED:

I choose no tail or toy!

Truth – a light that outdoes this sun.

You will not understand –

You do not believe.

CARADOC:

I believe what I see, touch, grope, wrestle with,

What I possess, what I propose to possess

By a man’s right –

You are my right.

‘Say Nothing, Priest, Father, Mother’

CARADOC:

Say nothing, Priest, father, mother.

I have said all, done all.

This is Caradoc –

A chieftain of this valley.

THE PET BEAST

Pasiphae would pacify a lust

Grown beyond questioning.

In Daedalus she knew at length she must

Deposit trust:

This was a thing she durst not tell the king.

A wooden cow, she ordered, queenly. Why

Not, the pared artisan

Said inly, only bowing else. It is my

Part to comply.

He gathered tools and plywood and began.

Why not a maze made from a ball of string,

Why not a clockwork bird,

Or birds wrought of stale breadcrumbs that can sing?

Beyond questioning

A royal statue, statute, though absurd.

Minos the cold judged cases in his dreams.

Awake, lithe at his task,

The other whistled, sawing pliant beams.

Law is what seems,

The craftsman’s place to act and not to ask.

The queen was to be bedded and then shut in

(This was the queen’s idea)

A box she might confess unholy rut in.

The artist cut in

A door there with a small foramen here.

The king snored, a treeload of raven-calls

Cried fear. The painted cow

Was carried to the plain outside the walls.

Mobled in shawls,

The queen trod after, shivering somewhat now.

She crouched darkling waiting enwombed in wood,

Awake, asleep, adoze.

Moon rise on empty grass. She started, could

Through the eyed hood

See pleniluned the distant dust that rose.

She racked then on a sea whose spume was dust,

The sea began to bleed,

Its waves were snorts and roars. The white beast’s lust

Rent in one thrust

A womb grown sudden hands to grasp the seed.

Moonset. And from the ruin hoofed apart

She wanly signalled Come

To slaves whom not that act but prescient art

Hot as her heart

Had rendered cruelly and coldly dumb.

They bore her sleeping whither she must sleep

Next to the snoring king.

Daedalus had seen all, Daedalus must keep

Silence asleep

As dumbness. Daedalus had not seen a thing.

She was a queen of cautions. Covertly

Had seized his only son

Who, walled beyond the feasibility

Of recovery,

Would be a hostage till her time was done.

Or till no time. As human deeds were shut,

Dried flowers, in books of law,

So human will and love and pain were but

Raw stuff to cut

To the gods’ templates. That’s what men are for.

She had done the gods’ will anyway. And now

The royal days went on,

The king his cases, queen her casing how

She, calving cow,

Would fare if he observed she was far gone.

Myopic Minos, though, in books his eyes,

But dry each nether eye

After two daughters and no son. But wise

To recognise

Signs, changes, moods. And always spies to spy.

After three moon-rolls she announced she would

Spend winter in the south.

He nodded, nodded, said he understood.

The cold here. Good.

The thing within shot acid to her mouth.

SIGNS (DOGS OF PEACE)

Earth remains. The ancient houses of men

Stand or crumble, and then stand again,

But always with blind windows, slow to start

To bid goodbye to the young men who depart

Into the world, the world where now I lie

Smelling flower-smells and hearing from the sky

The vapid news of birds, repeating We

Can see the sea, can you too see the sea?

Nonsense. Still sea remains, the jagged teeth

Of hills beyond, the leagues and leagues beneath

Of frond and fishlife and, above, of men,

Who stand or crumble, and then stand again,

Building a little life of talk and wine

And wine and talk, wives, children. Come, a sign,

Give us a sign. And what shall it signify?

Nothing. Men must just signal or else die,

Erecting signs, ejecting signs, in stores

Purchasing