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

up at that.

So it was rods and whips and the occasional

Salutary thrust of the spear that held them back,

The wailing and cursing, as the farm-carts filled

With wailing babies. It became a game,

On Nile bank, to see who could throw the furthest,

Bets laid, but some of the soldiers were sick,

And not only on a won bet of a jar of palm-wine.

They’re things, man, no more, go on, throw. They threw.

It was a long business. General commanding commanded

A free day and an extra beer ration. They threw,

Some of them, in their sleep. And then calm,

Nile unperturbed, birdsong, a gorgeous day

As the princess came down to the river, a cortège

Of priests intoning:

Lord of the river and of the quickening mud

Whence all manner of lowly things are brought to birth,

Bring to thy servant the gift of fecundity,

That she may not be despised among the daughters of earth,

And the worth of her birth be matched by the worth of thy gift.

Lift her, O river lord, to the ranks of the mothers.

The ritual disrobing: the golden headpiece lifted

To disclose a painful baldness, then the silks

Whistling away from scars, emaciation

On slenderness otherwise comely, framed in

Palms and stonework, royalty unimpaired

By the absurd daubing of Nile mud, the carven

Beauty of the face unmoved, unmoved still

As the filthy rite proceeded, ended, the silks

Were laid to the ulcered flesh, the golden headpiece

Restored, and, to a wordless chant with the rising

Notes of hope in it, the cortège left the river.

The river flowed clear, save for lotus and riverweed,

But then the first of the infant corpses appeared,

Floating downstream.

There had been no craft,

Or perhaps cruelty had its limit, to snatch out the foetus

And examine its sex. So Jochebed came to her time,

Groaning in their corner of a hovel of heavy sleep,

And Amram kneeling anxious by her, each cry of her pain

Forcing him to stifle it with his hand:

‘Forgive me, my love. Forgive me. Someone may hear.

I trust no one.’ And some of the sleepers stirred,

Dreaming perhaps of a dead son, then resettled.

One of the sleepers awoke and came softly to him,

And he started, but it was his daughter Miriam.

‘There is a sort of shed a little way off,

Full of mattocks and brick-moulds. It must be there.’

He nodded. It was a heavy task, under the moon, dogs baying.

The deformed door creaked. ‘A space under that cart.’

Her agony mounted, Miriam looked wide-eyed, and then

He came out on the flood, crying to the world. As in response

The feet of a patrol could be heard on cobbles

Not too far off, soldiers marching in moonlight

And that cry going out, moonlight flooding his sex.

Sing, Miriam prayed and, as in response,

The soldiers sang, and the dirty song was a blessing:

Here’s the way

We earn our pay

Who’s the enemy we slay?

Baby Israelites if they

Have balls between their legs

That’s no way

To earn your pay

We would rather any day

Take their mothers and then lay

Our balls between their legs

Amram in wonder held the howling child in his arms,

In agony and joy for a second son. And yet, how, how –

‘None comes here,’ Miriam said. ‘I know. And if any comes,

I shall be in the way of his coming. It must be three

Roundings of the moon. I shall sit here and guard

And I shall weave.’ Weave? She wove out of bulrushes

And parried queries in the sun. But where did she go?

To the house of a cousin, just north of Pithom.

And when will she return? She still has fever.

She sends greeting but begs that none come near her.

The fever is catching. What is that thing you weave?

A basket. A cage. A cage for doves. A cage indeed.

A cage within a cage. When the cage was finished,

Miriam took it, eager-eyed, to her mother

And the three-month child, milk bubbling on his lip,

And said: ‘Listen.’ And Jochebed listened in wonder.

But it was in fear, in working daylight, that Miriam

Carried her cradle or ark to the Nile, opening it

Often and often as she sped through the meadows

To cluck at the child, to whisper ‘Can you breathe’?

The river’s weedy length no longer carried

Human corpses. Rats swam, a fish smote the surface and snapped.

And then a cage of bones, a child’s bones. She wept,

Heard an ass bray, started, then was able to smile,

Then to laugh. ‘Be brave’, she whispered. ‘You have much to do.’

The baby cried and she hushed him. Then a voice asked:

‘What have you in there?’ A man’s voice. From her crouch

She saw strong legs, hair, leather, a countryman

With a bag and leather bottle, the face stupid

But not unkind. ‘My things’, she said. ‘My treasure.’

He laughed, and the ass brayed, and the laughter of ladies

Could now be heard, downstream. ‘Treasure,’ he brayed,

Moving off, then whistled a dog. She, from the reeds,

Watched covertly. Downstream, ladies playing at ball.

And then a deep drum from within the

Palace gardens, it must be, and a male chant

As of some holy procession coming. The ladies quietened,

Made moues at each other, then scattered through green.

Then Miriam saw a lady immensely tall,

A gold headpiece, silks liquid in the sun,

Well-attended, languid priestesses, they must be,

And burly priests, coming slowly to the river, intoning:

You who nourish the reed and tamarind,

The date-palm and the pepper-tree,

From whose mud the crocodile breeds,

Many-toothed, tough as a chariot…

And it was at that moment that Miriam saw a child’s corpse,

Ravaged by rats, float drunkenly downstream. It was the

Moment of courage, to answer the dead with the living,

And delicately consigned the bulrush cage or cradle

To the waters. The princess, she must be, said, seeing

In revulsion that bloated and bitten cadaver,

‘You address the river as a river of life. Leave me.’

They waited, unsure. ‘Leave me, leave me.’ And they left,

Save for her, it must be, waiting-woman, maid.

‘Live,’ whispered Miriam, ‘live.’ A current took the

Cage, cradle, ark, and swirled it shoreward,

Into the reeds. The lady saw. The ladies saw. The

Princess, it must be, said: ‘That. What is it? Go in and

Bring it to me. Quick, before the river

Takes it again.’ And it was so. To what or whom,

Miriam wondered, did one pray now? She prayed to the

Infant now passing from arms to arms, yelling hard

Against the melting wall of surprise: Let