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

swine, yes, but a clean swine, to his credit.

He said: ‘You’re Jesus, then, king of the Jews?’

Christ sought not to deny, affirm or edit,

But looked him in the eye and said: ‘You’ve said it.’

60. CHRIST AT THE PILLAR

Stripped naked like a candidate for slavery,

Lashed to a post, Jesus, from head to feet,

Beaten by bastards who knew how to beat.

Yielded his skin to graduates in knavery.

No spot was spared. He ended an unsavoury

Blue-green-vermilion chunk of dirty meat,

The sort that’s bought for cats and dogs to eat

From fly-buzzed butchers’ barrows in Trastevere.

No spot spared? Well, I did some small research

Into that very whipping post, that’s placed,

As is well known, in St Prassede’s church,

And found it didn’t come up to my waist.

So, though Christ’s limbs, loins, face, flanks, belly shared

Foul blows, his sitteth-on-God’s-right was spared.

61. COURAGE

You’ve seen a felon in the public pillory

Having his buttocks beaten to a mash,

And much admired his cool disdainful dash,

The muscles firm – both gluteal and maxillary

(Aided no doubt by draughts from the distillery).

But now consider Christ beneath the lash,

Deafened by the incessant crash and slash

Of leather, sticks, the whole damned crude artillery.

Consider how each whipstroke gashes, galls

Ribs, shoulders, flanks, how bits of torn flesh keep

Falling away, as, say, boiled mutton falls

From the bone. But does the victim whine or weep?

No. Though all that is left of him is his balls.

He merely counts the strokes, like counting sheep.

62. ILL-STARRED

How can you think of Christ without a sob?

Dropped like a beast in a foul nest of straw,

Forced, as a boy, with hammer, pliers, saw

To slave away at a woodworker’s job,

A youth, he walked the world with grumbling maw,

Preaching the word to a disdainful mob,

A man, he had a price upon his nob,

And Judas sold him to the Roman law.

The spit, the lash, the doom, the thorny crown,

The nails, the cross, the vinegar-soaked rag

Tied to a pole, the diced-for bloody gown:

All burdens fell upon him, sacred bag

Of bones – hence the old saying handed down:

Flies always settle on a spavined nag.

63. THE TWO BREEDS

We come into this world bedecked in shit,

Some of us anyway, including Jesus.

But others are born rich as fucking Croesus,

Mightily proud, mightily proud of it.

The crown, the coronet, the mitre fit

Men for whom earth gushes out gold like geysers,

While we are lemons ready for the squeezers,

Scarred nags for spurs, bare backsides to be hit.

If Christ was one of us, why did he give in

Such plenty palaces for those to live in,

Making us stew in filth and sweat and pus?

Why, even on the cross, in the last flood

Of pain, it was for them he gushed forth blood

But trickled bloody water out for us.

64. GUILT IN THE GHETTO

There’s a whole race that seems to merit hell

Because the bloody reprobates refuse

To join the Church of Rome – I mean the Jews.

They let Christ die upon the cross as well.

Still, as some learned Jewish rabbis tell,

There is a circumstance that one may choose,

If one’s fair-minded, that can near-excuse

The dozen errant tribes of Israel.

When Christ left home to work his métier,

He knew Good Friday was his destined day:

Death was a big word in his lexicon.

Doomed-to-be slain (put it another way)

Must meet a complementary doomed-to-slay.

Somebody had to take that business on.

65. LIMBO

When Jesus rose triumphant from the tomb,

Defying natural law as well as Roman,

He whizzed down like a shot shot by a bowman

And dragged the saintly souls from Limbo’s gloom.

Then Purgatory started to assume

The place of rhubarb in a sick abdomen;

Masses were sold like tickets by a showman –

Twin innovations that are still in bloom.

The angels, after brooding wings akimbo,

Put infant souls, baptised in milk and piss

But not the font, into that empty Limbo.

It wasn’t meant to last, of course, and when

The Last Trump offers only blaze or bliss,

Christ knows where the young bastards will go then.

66. CHRIST IN HELL

The Creed says Christ descended into Hell.

What could his Father have been thinking of,

Sending him there? Is that paternal love?

Jesus in Hell. Christ Jesus. Hell. Well, well,

For my part, faith and candour both compel

My stating that the buggers up above –

Not God but government – desired to shove

Christ in that ill-appointed hot hotel.

Jesus in Hell. O Jesus Christ in Hades.

Ever since earth was earth and sky was sky,

A finer gentleman, gentlemen, ladies,

Was never picked to whip and crucify

Than Jesus. Let’s believe that when he made his

Trip it was just hello and then goodbye.

67. DOUBTING THOMAS

When Christ rose up, those somewhat timid gentry

His friends kicked up a noise, but one apostle –

St Thomas – sang as loud as any throstle:

‘It’s an imposture. Obvious. Elementary.

Anyway, how could he pass the fucking sentry?’

Jesus meanwhile, unseen in the Easter jostle,

Was making for their place at a colossal

Speed, and he used the keyhole for his entry.

He cried: ‘Poke in your finger, near this rib,

And you’ll soon see whether I still exist

Or the whole tale is just a fucking fib.’

St Thomas came and shoved his great ham fist

Into the hole. He then became as glib

A Christian as he’d been a rationalist.

68. WHITSUN

You’ve seen the cook shove larding needles in

Pork, lamb, beef or some other meaty treat,

While seated on your trattoria seat,

Hungry as hell and anxious to begin.

Fat spits and bubbles underneath the skin,

The very sizzle’s good enough to eat,

And while the flame and fat and fibre meet,

Saliva dribbles almost to your chin.

This is one way to cook a fine fat pigeon,

But not the dove of pentecostal peace.

Dressed as a grilled lamb-tongue, this fluttered down

And, to feed hungry bellies with religion,

It cooked the eleven apostles good and brown

Until they spat with holy grace or grease.

69. SPREAD THE WORD

When Jesus died, firm in the Christian creed,

St Peter’s party picked up the Lord’s load

And, staff in fist, they took the Cassia road

And went about the world to sow their seed.

Some sought – lazy, or fired to feed a need –

Baccano and La Storta; others strode

To Nepi, Monterosi, where they showed

The Christian way of death in word and deed.

Nay, more – to teach the good and ban and banish

The bad, they went to lands