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

fleshless, fallen in flight.

Twice he found porous rock that, struck with his staff

Though feebly, disgorged a fresh trickle. He lapped, blessing,

Thought what to bless? There was once stone

That he wished to take for some effigy but a

Thought of last night’s stars made him ashamed.

The way of Egypt with the stars was to make them

Bow down to the muddy god of the Nile, but here

They were, in a manner, unmolested. Nor, so it seemed to him,

Was it all straight lines up there, joining star to star,

No Egyptian geometry. Curves rather. Seeing that

Egypt was all measuring-rods, squares, cubes, pyramids,

But Unegypt, which could be, might as well be,

Israel, was curves – fruit and the leaping of lambs

And the roundness of the body gloried in not constrained

In geometry. Was he delirious, hearing himself say

God is round? The term meant nothing except that the

Sun and the moon possessed this perfect roundness,

But one day he saw sun and moon in the morning together

And saw more than that, heard himself saying:

Not one not the other but the light that is given to both.

Given, that was it, but by what given? What or whom?

The god of the, the gods of the. Miriam had talked

Of the God of the Israelites, the God of Jacob.

Again the god of the. And you tamed the stars then

And set them to prophesying mud. God. The stars were back

In their firmament, aloof. Words mean what exists.

God not a word then. A cantrip. A device for

Keeping the stars free. At some uncounted dawn

On whatever day it was he saw ahead a mountain,

Must be a mountain, no mirage, with a nap of green,

But that could be mirage, as could as must be that,

Tree in the distance, solitary palm, fronds soon able to be

Counted. Counting, though, was Egyptian arithmetic,

Not apt for the desert. Reality was too royal,

Must be accorded the courtesy of averted eyes,

Not too boldly approached. Tried the cantrip God

To hold the tree there, and it held. Too weak to hurry, though.

The song of the daughters he could not yet hear,

Was a real song, royal, more than a first line:

What will love bring

When he comes?

A silver ring.

Earth will ring

With his tread

When he comes.

On his head

Kingly crown

When he comes down

From the hill.

What will he bring?

A silver ring

When he comes…

The mountain had a name: Horeb. This was a tree-grown pasture

In a valley, and from the well at dawn,

Jethro’s daughters drew, singing. But the song stopped

When the leering shepherds arrived, pushing in their buckets,

With Away there, bitches, find another well,

Scratch, would you, if you want to scratch

Scratch this itch. Then he came down from the hill,

Wearing dust not silver, crowned with his second anger,

His staff held high, then he smote like a king,

But after fell for faintness, seeing them run

And calling Mad, mad, he is mad, leaving blood in the dust.

Surrounded by round-armed girls, he smiled then

Turned up his eyes, seeing round flesh and green

And after nothing but ringing indistinguishable

Suns and moons. But he awoke in a tent smelling

Sheep’s cheese, sheep’s milk, new bread, an old shepherd

Smiling over him, a girl named Zipporah

Solicitous with a bowl, bread torn into warm milk.

He ate and gave his name, a man cast out of Egypt,

Seeking a new life. Jethro, set around with girls,

Was all to ready to talk to a man, talking at length:

‘I was once a priest of the town of Midian.

But I grew sick of stone idols, grew to believe

That faith was concerned with – well, not with,

If you know the word, multiplicity. A man

Must worship something great and simple. In the desert

Sometimes one sees an image of this. On Mount Horeb there

A man, I sometimes think, might see an even greater

Image of the truth. Out of meditation.

I have seen no visions. Perhaps I am too old.

I am certainly too old to climb it.’ Zipporah,

Gently: ‘Come to our story, father.’ Jethro smiled,

Saying: ‘Yes yes, I wander. It is easily told.

I turned against these idols, the people against me.

We are cut off. My daughters must draw water

Before the Midian shepherds leave their beds,

Otherwise they may draw no water. But they come

Earlier and earlier. Depriving us of water

Has become a cruel sport. I am grateful for what you did.’

Moses: ‘You have said that. Many times. Already.’

But Zipporah: ‘Gratitude is not a word.

It is the desire to keep on saying the word.’

‘My daughters,’ Jethro said, ‘are forward in their speech,

If not in their deeds. How can one man prevail

Against so many women’? Then, after a pause:

‘You are travelling further? Perhaps to the town itself?’

Moses said: ‘For the moment. My own story.

Ends here. My journey has been. Into exile.

For exile is everywhere. For the exile.’

Jethro asked: ‘Can you do shepherd’s work?’

Moses said: ‘I had always been taught. That work.

Was for slaves. Egypt taught me. Many false things.’

Jethro, urgently: ‘Put off that word exile.

It is your people who know exile, not you.’ And Moses, softly:

‘Yes. I must learn. To think of them. As my people.’

My people, lashed to labour under the disdainful eyes

Of a growing prince, and Moses already growing

Into a myth. The time would soon come in Pithom

For a story told by the old to the young: ‘Moses.

That was his name. He was brought up a royal prince

But one day he turned against the Egyptians. He

Killed some of them. Oh, I do not know how many,

But there were certainly many. He was strong, you see,

Like a bull or a lion. Yes yes, or a crocodile.

And then he escaped out of Egypt for they wished to kill him.

Some say he will come back. But I believe he is

Dead in the desert, eaten by vultures or something,

Just very white bones now, picked clean.

No no, not eaten by crocodiles, where is your sense?

There are no crocodiles in the desert. It is in the

Water you get crocodiles. They are full of water.

Their eyes are full of water. They cry when they eat you.’

Then the old king died and the prince Mernefta

Rules in his turn, the new Pharaoh, remembering Moses,

But not yet as a myth. ‘His accusers,’ he said one day.

‘Are any of these still living?’ And a minister:

‘Majesty,