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

day two high ministers sat at a game

Of senet, an intricate, geometrical game, one saying:

‘Three days in the desert. How do we construe that?’

The other: ‘Israelite insolence, but we know its origin.’

And the first: ‘Moses, yes. And what precisely

Is the present position of Moses?’ The other shrugged,

Eyes on the game-board: ‘The situation between him and the

Pharaoh – forgive me, I have that in the wrong order –

Is that he, of his own free will, has cast himself

Clean out of favour. I gather that Pharaoh

Had an accession of chagrin, something to do with the past,

A kind of nostalgia, but that everything now

Is perfectly clear.’ The first one took a piece,

Grinning, and said: ‘The fable – you know the fable.

The lion prepared to eat the lamb and the lamb said:

Before I am eaten, sir, let me put my

Affairs in order. I assure you, noble sir,

I will be back in time for dinner.’ The other laughed,

Examined the board, then said: ‘The Israelites, I gather,

Are buzzing with hope. There is a little device

I have always been interested in trying. Bricks. Bricks.

Have you had any experience of brick-making? No,

Of course not. It is a simple process. Listen…’

So it happened, the next day, at the mudpits,

That the workers stood around, puzzled, and the foreman,

Not Dathan, an honest man, sincerely puzzled,

Went to his overseer, noticing that, usually,

There were soldiers around, and asked: ‘Sir. Where is the straw?’

There was no answer but grins began among the soldiers,

A kind of expectant lip-licking. ‘The straw, sir, straw.

To make bricks with. We have not straw. The straw hasn’t come.

Straw.’ An officer said: ‘What’s going on?

With respect, I mean, sir. Of course we have to have straw.

Mud, straw, water, the sun – that is how bricks are made.

Give us straw and we give you bricks. As always. Sir.’

A scribe sitting by, busy with accounts, said: ‘Changes.

There have been some changes. Nobody brings you straw,

Not ever again. You gather your own straw.

Or you do without. Is that clear? Is that perfectly clear?’

The foreman frowned, very puzzled, and the laughs began

Among the soldiers. He took the word back to the workers,

And Joshua, one of the workers, said: ‘No straw.

No bricks. A simple enough equation.’ Caleb nudged him,

And Joshua saw soldiers with bows and arrows at the ready.

A deputation – Aaron, and Moses also,

But a silent Moses at this stage of the tale,

Joshua, Caleb, others, the foreman leading –

Went to say to what was now a

Grinning knot of officials, well-backed by arrows:

‘Sir, sirs, with respect, we do not

Understand. If we get the straw ourselves

That doubles the work. I thought you needed bricks.

If this, of course, is just a way of saying

We don’t work hard enough – I mean, you can have more bricks,

If that’s what you mean. But give us the straw first.’

The Egyptians said nothing still, but smiles were wider.

Then Joshua cried out: ‘New Egyptian injustice!

We have had enough and more than enough!’ The smiles went

And the soldiers were on him. He spat

Lavishly into a military face, and then the fists started.

The other workers drew back – they had not meant this –

They had merely wanted to – Aaron looked at Moses

But Moses did, said nothing, abiding to the pattern,

While Joshua was lashed to a whipping-post and

Lashed to near-death. Joshua, when the sun set,

Still there, soldiers around him, guarding, covered with rod-marks,

Dried blood, flies frantic around the

Wounds still open. The foreman spoke to Moses:

‘You. You put the rod in their fists. You.

You’ll put the sword in their hands tomorrow.

Or tonight perhaps. You and your brother.

This God of yours. I hope he strikes you down.

Both of you. Strikes you dead.’ Moses was silent

But the voice within him spoke bitterly to a fire on Horeb:

Why have you done this? Why do you bring only

Evil to your people? Why did you send me back here?

Why could I not be left alone? The sun dipped,

And soon the bats circled, whistling, and then the

Irrelevant constellations, no answer. No speech

At the table in Aaron’s house – bread, fruit,

A meagre supper – and eyes averted from Moses,

Moses eating nothing, Aaron little, his eyes

Not averted though very troubled. When Moses left

To look at the stars in bitterness, Aaron followed

And said at one: ‘I want no more of it.’

Moses nodded. ‘You want to be free of me.’ –

‘Free of this business’, Aaron said, ‘Of having to

Speak in your name.’ – ‘You think it all a lie,

That the voice was a delusion, that I’m

Mad. Or misled. – ‘So our people think.’

But Moses: ‘They think wrong. The voice spoke

True. It made no false promises. Nothing will be easy.

But the Lord did make. One error. The error of choosing

Me.’ They were both silent then and, for a whole day,

Silent with each other. Silent to his face the

People Moses was sent to deliver, but behind his back

Not silent. Children would throw feeble stones

And old men spit in his path, no more. Joshua,

Broken, groaning on his bed with the flies about him,

Was a sufficient witness against him. To the fire on Horeb

Moses spoke desperately: See, Lord. See what you have done.

Since the moment of my return there has been

Nothing but sullenness and a renewal of evil ways.

Your people are sunken into a deeper slavery.

You do not wish to set them free. He walked through Pithom,

So speaking, seeing whores offer themselves,

A young man sunk far in disease and neglected,

Children squabbling for a cheap Egyptian toy.

And are they not right to have lost hope?

Lord, why was it I who had to be chosen?

What shall I do? What shall I say to them?

And then the Lord spoke, but in the voice of Moses:

Moses. I begin now. Go to Pharaoh.

Say to him all that I bid you say. But the voice

Must be Aaron’s still. He must stand in your place.

But you must stand in the place of the Lord your God.

So Moses stood entranced a moment on the street in Pithom,

Saying aloud: ‘The Lord my God.’ There were jeers

As at a madman. A stone was hurled, and not by a child.

But he stood transfixed, impervious. ‘Lord my God.’

So there came the day,