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

when Lot’s wife turned and turned to salt.

Ah, woman, cursed by curiosity.

If all of our Italian women could

So change, as by that precedent they should,

They’d soon destroy the salt monopoly

And bring the price down, though of course we would

Be forced to live on salt and sodomy.

30. LOT IN REPOSE

God, then, assumed the office of a cook

And baked the Sodomites like salmon trout.

Only the family of Lot got out,

Though his wife suffered for that backward look.

They camped near Zoar, in a stony nook.

Lot’s daughters, starved of love, began to pout,

Seeing no sign of penises about,

And, driven by a fleshly need, forsook

Propriety. Here at least was their father.

They gave him wine with a well-salted pasty.

When he was drunk they fucked him to a lather,

Not finding this unnatural or nasty.

No fire rained down. It seems that God is rather

Inclined to incest but hates pederasty.

31. EXODUS

Pharaoh, a rogue in charge of other rogues,

First drowned the Jews then turned them into slaves,

Driven to toil by knaves with stones and staves,

Just where the fertile Nilus disembogues.

But Moses (the humane dictator vogue’s

Said to start here), after some narrow shaves,

Led the Jews out between two walls of waves:

The buggers didn’t even wet their brogues.

When the Red Sea swung open like a door,

The Jews assumed their journey was near done,

Not having met the love of God before.

But round and round beneath the desert sun

They had to frig for forty years and more –

A fucking waste of time for everyone.

32. BALAAM’S ASS

As ancient Hebrew story tellers knew

The future better than the past, we lack

Proof that when Balaam rode his donkey’s back

And, since it halted, beat it black and blue

The poor beast turned on him and brayed: ‘Hey, you,

Why did you launch that unprovoked attack?

If you could see that angel there you’d thwack

This ass, or arse, more gently than you do.’

If you believe this, welcome an incursion

Of awe to learn that donkeys can be pat in

High class Italian (English in this version).

Accept the premise and it follows that in

Pointing you out the donkeys that know Latin

(Aspeeeerges meeeeee) I cast no foul aspersion.

33. THE BATTLE OF GIDEON

300 Jews knitted their warlike brows and,

Armed with trombones and torches hid in skillets.

Marched in good order on their foemen’s billets,

Quiet as a moving munching herd of cows. And

As dancers on the stage taking their bows and

Boos in an endless belt endlessly fill it, s-

O this small troop marched in a circle till its

300 men looked damned near like 3000.

Ta-rah, ta-ray – clash pans, flash torches. Flustered,

And deafened as 300 brass are mustered,

The enemy collapses like a custard.

Such thrift! Today we have our martial brawls,

Our soldiers heed the bugle when it calls

And waste 300 fucking cannon-balls.

34. THE FOXES

The Bible is quite verminous with foxes.

Samson caught hundreds and, with foxy cunning,

Tied torches to their tails and set them running

Through his foes’ harvest-fields – thus, with hot proxies,

Saving them sweat. Still, they wished ninety poxes

Upon him and increased their vengeful gunning.

Though vermin then, where are they now? They’re shunning

Our hounds, like bishops shunning heterodoxies.

We ought to want them, since they stank of virtue

When Samson used them against naughty men.

But still an eggless henless world would hurt you

More than a foxless. If he came back again

With scores of foxes sniffing round his skirt, you

Would say: ‘I’d rather have a fucking hen.’

35. GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES (1)

Of all the Bible stories that they tell,

This one to come is quite the most fantastic.

A sonnet being so damned inelastic,

I’ll require two to tell it really well.

Well, now – the exodists from Egypt’s hell

Met the mad Malechites who, dreadful, drastic.

Ferocious, tastelessly enthusiastic,

Fell on the Hebrews, and the Hebrews fell.

God made a memorandum. After all,

The Jews pursued the then correct religion.

After four hundred years he called on Saul.

‘The Malechites,’ he said, ‘deserve the axe.

Spit the whole nation; roast it like a pigeon.

Don’t leave a feather on their fucking backs.’

36. GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES (2)

So in God’s name Saul went and waded in,

Trouncing them in one horrible stampede,

Goats, calves and all. Mercy maybe or greed

Or something made him save Prince Agag’s skin.

Samuel now prophesied about Saul’s sin!

‘Idolater, betrayer of our creed,

A holier Israelite will supersede

Your reign and make a holier reign begin.

Bring me the prince you blasphemously spared.’

Tremulous as a fatted pig, that prince

Stuttered – agagagag aghast, shit-scared.

The holy Samuel did not blink or wince

But raised the butcher’s blade that he had bared

And made a mound of Malechitish mince.

37. DAVID’S DUEL

How powerful is God’s arm! He sent a boy

To fight Goliath, who was tough and scary,

Who swallowed foes like oysters of the prairie

And thought he’d stamp on David like a toy.

But God wished Israel to yell with joy

To know that every flabby, weak, unhairy

Weed that loves Jesus and his mother Mary

Finds giants rather easy to destroy.

Seeing the stone and sling and stripling shepherd,

Goliath cried: ‘You little prick, you’ve gone a

Mite too far,’ and tensed up like a leopard.

But David blessed the saints and the Madonna,

Measured his fireline, fired his pebble up it

And saw Goliath crumple like a puppet.

38. HOLY KING DAVID

King David’s later life? The stories vary.

It seems, though, his prophetic eye was sharp,

He spoke with God, he much preferred the bar-p-

Arlour to the coffee-shop or dairy.

Jesus, of David’s seed through holy Mary,

For David was a very pericarp,

Had his gab-gift, but could not play the harp

Nor sing like David, King Saul’s prize canary.

The Bible gives a fairish bona fide

Account of him, although it’s hard to follow:

The story is elliptical, untidy.

You’ll learn, however, that he loved to wallow

In love, and frot until his balls were hollow,

From Saturday till pretty late on Friday.

39. THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON

Solomon’s judgment. So. It makes you laugh.

But could a judge upon a modern bench,

Nose lifted high against the rabble’s stench,

For all his wigs and tomes and courtroom staff,

Do better? He, drained like his own carafe,

Hearing one wench scream at the other wench

In language that would make a bargee blench,

Could only say: ‘Let’s chop the child in half.’

The parish register was plain to see,

You say. He could have