Collected Poems by Anthony Burgess (best e ink reader for manga txt) 📕

BLASPHEMOUS BIBLE

1. THE CREATION OF THE WORLD

One day the bakers God & Son set to

And baked, to show their pasta-master’s skill,

This loaf the world, though the odd imbecile

Swears it’s a melon, and the thing just grew.

They made a sun, a moon, a green and blue

Atlas, chucked stars like money from a till,

Set birds high, beasts low, fishes lower still,

Planted their plants, and said: ‘Aye, that’ll do.’

No, wait. The old man baked two bits of bread

Called Folk – I quite forgot to mention it –

So he could shout: ‘Don’t bite that round ripe red

Pie-filling there.’ Of course, the buggers bit.

Though mad at them, he turned on us instead

And said, ‘Posterity, you’re in the shit.’

2. THE EARTHLY PARADISE OF THE BEASTS

Animals led a sort of landlord’s life

And did not give a fuck for anyone

Till man fucked up their social union

With gun and trap and farm and butcher’s knife.

Freedom was frolic, and rough fun was rife

And as for talk, they just went on and on,

Yakking as good as any dean or don,

While Adam stood there dumb, with a dumb wife.

This was the boss who came to teach them what

Was what, with harness, hatchet, stick and shot,

Bashing them to red gravy, thick and hot.

He stole their speech too, making sure he’d got

Dumb servitude – the plough; if not, the pot.

He had the last word. Nay, he had the lot.

3. PRIDE BEFORE A FALL

This furred and feathered boss of bird and brute

Assumed the god, all bloody airs and graces,

Nor deigned to look down in his subjects’ faces,

Treating each creature like a mildewed boot.

He swilled, he gorged, but his preferred pursuit

Mixed sticking pigs and whipping hounds on chases,

Marches through arches, blown brass and tossed maces,

With decking Eve, that bitch, in hunter’s loot.

The beasts had hunted looks, being forced to make,

Poor wretches, the bad best of a bad job

And put up with that swine – all save the snake

Who, spitting like a kettle on a hob,

Weaved at the foul shapes tyranny can take

And hissed: ‘I’ll get you yet, you fucking snob.’

4. BACK TO THE ROOTS

A sort of interlude. Let’s look at dogs.

At mastiff, Great Dane, greyhound, poodle, beagle,

The sausage hound, that yelps like a sick seagull,

Asthmatic bullpups honking hard as hogs.

Now men. Irish in bogs and Dutch in clogs,

Swarthy as turds, sharp-conked as any eagle,

The Jew and Turk. Then, trying to look regal,

Tea-slurping English, and French eating frogs.

Compare some doggy that leaps on to laps

With a prize wolfhound. Different as cheese and chalk.

In spite of this, our parish ballocks yaps

About us springing from a single stalk:

One primal bitch for pups, and one for chaps.

Did you ever hear such stupid fucking talk?

5. MAN

If God made man, we’ve no call to regret

Man’s love of blood and lack of bloody sense.

God, who’s all what they call om ni po tence,

(Meaning he’ll piss the bed and prove it’s sweat)

Pissed on some clay and sweated cobs to get

A statue from it, sparing no expense.

Then he took breath and blew – Ha Hadam. Hence

Man’s sometimes called the Puffed Up Marionette.

In just one minute he could spout out history

And write and read great tomes as tough as Plato’s.

He knew it all when first he tottered bedwards.

The names of beasts and birds – no bloody mystery.

Like a greengrocer sorting out potatoes:

‘This lot is whiteboys and these here King Edwards.’

6. HIS OWN IMAGE AND LIKENESS

Now, Brother Trustgod, Godtrust (never knew

God had a rupture. Sorry), please let me

Shove in a word. I just won’t have it, see.

God made us all in his own image, did he? You

Are mad. If Paul himself, yes Saint Paul, flew

Down to agree with you, I’d tell him he

Was mad. (He was mad.) Why don’t you decree

Satan was made in God’s own image too?

O bleeding Christ and Christ’s own bleeding mother,

Even if the sanctified three-hatted sod

Says what you say, it’s still, my half-arsed brother,

Mad. Is God’s image in greengrocers’ shops

Then, in greengrocers? God, he must be a God

Of cabbages and turnip bloody tops.

7. ALL ABOUT EVE

Give me a woman bare as a boiled egg,

Who’d think a brush and comb came from the divil,

Who owns no handkerchief to entrap her snivel,

Or towel or dishcloth hanging from a peg,

Who has no shoe on foot or hose on leg

Nor any of the Amenities of Civil-

Ised Life, to use the advertiser’s drivel.

No jakes to thrutch in and no pot to deg,

She will sup water but not sit in it

Nor on a chair nor underneath a roof,

She’ll never see the muckman do his duty.

Picture this little lady decked in shit

From hair to heel, then try to give me proof

That Mother Eve, Christ help us, was a beauty.

8. A REPLY

Scorn not our mother Eve. Remember: she,

When Adam took her, did not turn her face

But drank the dreadful fire of his embrace.

Dirty or not, without her where would we

Be? She merits homage. So, with me:

‘O ave Eva, though full of disgrace,

We love thee as the root of all our race;

Thy sap runs in us, leaves of thy living tree.’

Dirty? How do we know? Perhaps her skin

Was laved in a miraculous hygiene,

Just as the second Eve was laved within.

Not that it matters. For myself, I lean

To lauding both her sordor and her sin.

Without those to wash off, who could be clean?

9. THE FIRST MOUTHFUL

Which of the seven deadly sins is worst?

Pride sneering skyward, avarice shrieking More,

Liplicking lust, or anger, one red roar?

No, gluttony, the fifth sin, is the first.

From Adam burst a famine and a thirst

For a wormy apple offered by a whore,

A penny pippin. God has rammed its core

Down all our throats, a canker of the cursed.

That bitch, that blackguard. God, I gape aghast as

I contemplate the greed that could have cast us

Into the outer darkness – fed us, rather,

To final fire. But our ingenious master’s

As quick to cancel as to cause disasters,

And to this end kindly became a father.

10. ADAM’S SIN

The sceptic beats his brain till dawn’s first dapple

Lights him and all his books to slumber’s amity.

Though he’s read all from Moses to Mohamet, he

Rejects the truth of