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

Horeb

Moses emerged from the cloud, under his arms

Two tablets, intricately carved, grim, growing gentle

As he bade the sleeping Joshua awake.

Joshua looked up, saw the tablets, saw

A kind of white light about the head of Moses,

And, seeing, knelt. ‘Rise, Joshua,’ he was told.

‘We have mischief below. We must go down to the mischief.’

So they descended as dawn grew, till at length,

From a ridge above the encampment, they saw enough:

A beast of metal drunkenly on a plinth,

Daubed with dried blood, some of it flaking off,

A naked body, too mauled to show its sex,

Men and women sleeping naked, corpses,

Bloody everywhere, odd whimpering cries

From sources unseen, half-devoured whole sheep,

The flies already at their work, shattered wine jugs,

Blood. ‘Call’, said Moses quietly. ‘Call, Joshua.’

So Joshua put his hollowed hands to his cheeks

And called a long sound. He called and called.

Some stirred, then slept again, moaning. Some

Stirred and listened and wondered, dazed, then saw

Dried blood in the sun. Miriam heard,

Ceasing to sob, and Aaron, bruised, dry blood on him,

Heard. Many heard, looking in fear, wonder,

Seeing bones, spilt wine, soon, silent in the camp,

Two men walking. Zipporah, lying alone,

Blood on her garment, saw: light from his head,

His, shining, and behind his head an instant

The battered horns. He did not seem to see her,

Then Aaron stood before Moses, saying nothing,

Having nothing to say, then fell down in tears,

And Moses said, in sadness: ‘Not enough knowledge.

Never enough. And out of ignorance, evil.

The work wasted. All the work wasted.’

In his arms were the stones, painfully chiselled.

‘The covenant is broken. We must start again.’

And soon to an assembled nation, weeping and fearful:

‘The covenant is broken. We must start again.

You said you would accept the covenant.

But you had no faith, a frail and ignorant people.

And now the tablets of the law, so lovingly,

So painfully inscribed, must be smashed to dust.

For what was accepted in freedom was rejected in freedom.

Men are born free to do good and free to do ill.

You chose the latter way. You must suffer for that,

Suffer, since freedom always has its price.

You must suffer for that, in modes of suffering

That soon you will see, hear, smell, taste, feel in the

Very nerve and the very marrow. But first

We must perform the rite of the breaking of the covenant.

So be it.’ And he threw the stones to the earth.

Aaron and Koreh took stones and broke the stones,

Ground the stones to dust, sweating. The words

Were released to the sphere of the spirit, but the stone

Was dust. ‘We must start again,’ said Moses.

‘Once more I ascend the mountain, there to take

Once more counsel of the Lord our God, but first – ’

It was evening, and a great fire was being blown

To white heat. ‘What you worshipped,’ Moses cried,

‘Must be your bane. The thing you took unto yourselves

In the spirit you must now in chastisement take

Unto yourselves in the flesh. Not all, but some.

For you are all one people, and it suffices

That one limb, tooth, nerve, eyeball be enforced

To shriek out for the entire body to know

Pain. Pain. I have appointed officers

Of the tribe of Levi to see that mouths which cried

In obscene ecstasy shall now, in a diverse mode,

Cry out. Not all but some, the grosser sinners.

What you kissed you now must eat and drink.’

The calf on it plinth was dragged down by the Levites

And cast into the fire, there to dissolve

To a scalding broth. ‘This,’ he cried, ‘was your God.’

It was mingled with water and thrust down the sinners’ throats.

Nor was this all. The grosser sinners were stoned,

Hanged, pierced by arrows, hurled from the slopes

(But not Dathan, whose destiny lay otherwise,

Whose potency of grossness was, as it were,

Decreed as a thorn for Moses). The masons chose

New stone and shaped it for a new covenant.

And Moses, before he sought the peak of Horeb

Once more, Joshua with him, asked the people:

‘Will you remember that this is the Lord your God,

Who brought you out of Egyptian bondage? Will you

Promise to worship no other God but Him,

Nor to make images of things that are on the earth

Or in the sky or rivers or seas for profane

And sinful worship? Will you keep the Sabbath holy,

Preserve the holiness of the family, honour your parents,

Respect the sanctity of the bond of marriage? Do you

Promise never to steal, never to murder,

Never to lust after that what is another’s? Will you

Keep the covenant the covenant will you

Keep the covenant?’ Will will we will.

The valley rang with shamed affirmation.

Yes hurtled through the air as the last of the

Condemned hurtled from the slopes. So Moses and Joshua

Climbed Horeb for the second time, leaving below

A chastened nation burying its dead,

Burying much else. So time passed, with the covenant

Unbroken, the covenant the sacred body of the law

Inscribed not in the riddling signs of the priests

They had known in Egypt but in a new way, a way

Apt for a covenant, with signs for sounds of speech

That all might read if they would, but the sacred stones

Had to be housed in a sacred place. The craftsmen

Built an arc of wood, with beauty and cunning

Spent on it to the utmost, and here the covenant

Was tabernacled. Moses said Aaron:

‘It is in your keeping, Aaron. Aaron the priest.’ –

‘The priest,’ Aaron said. ‘How must I take that?

In a manner of a punishment?’ But Moses said:

‘A priest is God’s voice. Could any man wish

To be higher than God’s voice?’ – ‘Once,’ Aaron said,

‘I was your voice.’ – ‘And so,’ his brother replied,

‘Take this not in manner of a punishment but in

Manner of a promotion’. They looked at each other,

A curve unreadable on each other’s lips,

And Aaron said: ‘Well then – to my first office.’

And Moses: ‘God be with you, man of God.’

So Aaron was enrobed and he walked to the ark

And reverently shut the covenant within,

Improvising a ceremony: ‘Hereon is inscribed

God’s law. The very stone shall be accounted

Sacred. Behold our God is a just God.’

Stiff-jointed the people knelt. Then Moses knelt.

And Aaron the priest prayed: ‘God, who art a just God,

Be also, we beseech, a forgiving God.

For men are weak, being made but of earth’s clay,

Quick to transgress. If, Lord, we