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

temple, mosque and chapel:

That man brought sin and death and hell to grapple

His soul in irons, condemning God to damn it. He

Set up an aboriginal calamity

Or, if you like, munched a forbidden apple.

Why why why? One song, too many singers.

Why why? Why won’t unwrite the bloody book.

So let them write a new one if they must.

Why why? We want an answer. They can look

In Milo Aphrodite’s clutching fingers

Or up the arsehole of Pasquino’s bust.

11. THE FIRST CLOTHES

Before they yielded to the devil’s urging

And crunched the good-bad apple to the core,

Bare innocence was all our parents wore,

Like Jesus Christ got ready for the scourging.

After their second gorge they felt emerging

A thing called shame. So rapidly they tore

Leaves from the trees to cover what before

Had been mere taps for secondary purging.

So good and evil, as we must conclude,

Succeed in making rude and crude and lewd

The dumpendebat and the fhairy grot.

Else why should man and missis play the prude?

Each knew, however leafily endued,

Precisely what the other one had got.

12. THE STATE OF INNOCENCE (1)

There’d be, if Adam hadn’t sold our stock,

Preferring disobedience to riches,

No sin or death for us poor sons of bitches.

Man would range free, powerless to shame or shock,

And introduce all women to his cock,

Without the obstacles of skirt and breeches,

Spreading his seed immeasurably, which is

To say: all round the world, all round the clock.

The beasts would share the happy lot of men,

Despite a natural plenitude of flies.

There’d be no threats of Doomsday coming when

Christ must conduct the dreadful last assize.

Instead, the Lord would look in now and then,

Checking our needs, renewing our supplies.

13. THE STATE OF INNOCENCE (2)

I’m puzzled. (Bear with me, Father Superior.)

If Adam’s gorging had not been the means

Of turning us to compost for the beans

– Nothing more useful, yes, but nothing drearier –

And all who issue from their dam’s interior

Did not end up by pushing up the greens,

Now what would be finale to those scenes

Which start with bouts of murderous hysteria?

Ah but, you say, along with immortality

There’d be no urge to sin: remember this.

Thank you. And so – predestinate causality,

And no free will (but Adam had it: yes?).

What puzzles me is: would we incur fatality

If we fell down a bloody precipice?

14. HOLY STARVATION

We sinners have to eat four times a day

Or, if we happen to be English, five.

But man unfallen would have stayed alive.

If not a single crumb had come his way.

And even if they’d served him on a tray

Boiled stones, mashed mud, garnished with poison iv-

Y, he’d survive – indeed, contrive

To thrive on shit like any flower of May.

Everyone thin, carting an empty belly

About, knowing no gustatory bliss

In wine or trout or grouse in aspic jelly;

With jam a joke and fowl farci a farce.

The tongue and teeth for talk – yes; but why this

Hole, O ye holy buggers, up the arse?

15. CAIN AND THE LORD

‘Cain, where is Abel?’ Silence. ‘Cain, Cain, where

Is Abel?’ Silence. ‘Cain!’ Then came Cain’s cry:

‘Shoving your nose in. How the hell should I

Know where he is? Or, for that matter, care?

Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Eden’s air

Darkened at this, shuddered at God’s reply:

‘I’ll tell you where, you killer – done in by

Your knife, he’s pushing up those parsnips there.

Out of my sight, start running, up and down

The whole damned earth, you damned, you cursed; and cry

Through every bloody street of every town.

Howl, you unchristian swine, your dismal tune

Hurl at the stars, then shiver in the sky,

Weep till you brim the pockholes of the moon.’

16. CAIN’S CRIME

Please don’t think, Herr Professor, I intend

Defending Cain. Better than you, perhaps,

I know him, but know too the sort of lapse

Drink will induce – how it can blind and bend

And break. See Cain drunk, beckoning like a friend,

Thick stick in fist, an oiled smile on his chaps,

Wooing his brother hither. Then he taps,

Raps bone, draws blood, the swine, and makes an end.

Filthy? Oh, yes. Still, it was far from funny

Having to hear God hawking up his phlegm

To spit upon his parsnips and his honey

But not on Abel’s sheep, no, not on them.

Born of the breed of men and not of mice,

Cain growled revolt then cut himself a slice.

17. THE SECOND SIN

Reproach him not for bidding crime begin.

Evil was what he sucked in from his mother.

The murder of his innocent young brother

Derived from something deep beneath the skin.

As two and two make four, so man makes sin.

Still, there’s a nagging problem tough to smother:

How did he know when one man cracks another

With force enough he does that other in?

Think now. Before Cain played the bloody brute

No one had demonstrated death as yet.

This doctrine, then, is murderous to refute:

That murder is an impulse man first met

When his teeth met inside that juicy fruit.

What’s homicide? A thing your father ate.

18. THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE

God said to Noah: ‘Listen, er patriarch.

You and your sons, each take his little hatchet,

Lop wood enough to build yourselves an ark

To these specifications. Roof and thatch it

Like Porto de Ripetta ferry. Mark

Me well now. Chase each make of beast and catch it.

And catch a male or female that will match it.

Then with your victuals, zoo and wives, embark.

A flood is going to test your wooden walls,

A world’s end deluge. Tivoli waterfalls

Will seem an arc of piss in a urinal.

Ride it until you sight a rainbow. Then

Jump in the mud and make things grow again

Till the next world’s end. (That one will be final.)’

19. NOAH’S ARK

Elephants, fleas, cows, lions, sheep, wolves, hares,

Foxes and flies, roosters and stags and stallions,

Mice by platoons and rabbits by battalions,

Donkeys and pigs and bugs, monkeys and mares.

Meat by the ton, cheese, pasta, worms, figs, pears,

Maize, clover, hay, whey, pigswill, skilly, scallions,

Bones, birdseed, bran, melons like golden galleons,

Minced heart for owls and honey for the bears:

These and much more poor Noah stowed in the boat

That God made airtight, cosy, close and dark.

A year and more this barnyard was afloat,

Heady with parmigiano, goat and skunk.

How did he cope, our blessed patriarch?

Ask him. He may respond by getting drunk.

20. THE NEW WINE

Drunk, yes. Near his palazzo,