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

it

After this sea-man, call it after

Pelagius. And lo the heresy existed.

Pelagius appeared, north-pale, cool as one of

Britain’s summers, to say, in British Latin:

Christ redeemed us from the general sin, from

The Adamic inheritance, the sour apple

Stuck in the throat (and underneath his solar

Hide Augustine blushed). And thus, my load,

Man was set free, no longer bounden

In sin’s bond. He is free to choose

To sin or not to sin, he is in no wise

Predisposed, it is all a matter of

Human choice. And by his own effort, yea,

His own effort only, not some matter of God’s

Grace arbitrarily and capriciously

Bestowed, he may reach heaven, he may indeed

Make his heaven. He is free to do so.

Do you deny his freedom? Do you deny

That God’s incredible benison was to

Make man free, if he wished, to offend him?

That no greater love is conceivable

Than to let the creature free to hate

The creator and come to love the hard way

But always (mark this mark this) by his own

Will by his own free will?

Cool Britain thus spoke, a land where indeed a

Man groans not for the grace of rain, where

He can sow and reap, a green land, where

The God of unpredictable Africa is

A strange God.

Augustine said: If the Almighty is also Allknowing,

He knows the precise number of hairs that will fall to the floor

From your next barbering, which may also be your last.

He knows the number of drops of lentil soup

That will fall on your robe from your careless spooning

On August 5th, 425. He knows every sin

As yet uncommitted, can measure its purulence

On a precise scale of micropeccatins, a micropeccatin

Being, one might fancifully suppose,

The smallest unit of sinfulness. He knows

And knew when the very concept of man itched within him

The precise date of your dispatch, the precise

Allotment of paradisal or infernal space

Awaiting you. Would you diminish the Allknowing

By making man free? This is heresy.

But that God is merciful as well as allknowing

Has been long revealed: he is not himself bound

To fulfil knowledge. He scatters grace

Liberally and arbitrarily, so all men may hope,

Even you, man of the northern seas, may hope.

But Pelagius replied: Mercy is the word, mercy.

And a greater word is love. Out of his love

He makes man free to accept or reject him.

He could foreknow but refuses to foreknow

Any, even the most trivial, human act until

The act has been enacted, and then he knows.

So men are free, are touched by God’s own freedom.

Christ with his blood washed out original sin,

So we are in no wise predisposed to sin

More than to do good: we are free, free,

Free to build our salvation. Halleluiah.

But the man of Hippo, with an African blast,

Blasted this man of the cool north…

THE PRINCELY PROGRESS

To nubile Charles yet unennobled James

Presents this specimen of Higher Games

Assured though of at least an O.B.E.

Sooner or later for well let’s just see –

Skill in the dour destructive witticism

His services to television criticism?

Besides as is well known our Royal Family

Loves digs against Itself however hammily

Delivered. And again (let it be muttered)

The colonially bred must be well buttered.

Though unrelated to the Sage of Rye

And Lion of Lamb House, James trains one eye

Upon the intolerable pinnacles of Style,

Terse verse not poofter mandarin the while

He steeps the other in the pail of crystal

He weekly shatters with his fist or pistol

Nor is this Clive of India. He hails

From Empire’s shoddier jewel, New South Wales.

Where penal memories still rawly rankle:

Observe the chain-mark round the loose-socked ankle.

Though Cambridge-sleeked and London-tamed, at times

He plonks an Aussie phoneme in his rhymes.

Like martyred/started on Page 96

Of this new Hudibrastic instant mix

That mocks and makes the royal congeries

No more fantastic than it really is.

His epic subject is the Prince of Cymru

And all the flaming flim and flam and flummery

That have oppressed our future king’s career

From when he first cocked his cup-handle ear

(The image is from Marc on the dust-jacket)

In wonder at the loyal London racket

Which warmed the Arctic day that distant June

Whereon our second (Vivat!) mortal moon

Became state welfare’s onomastic bastion

And head of two ecclesiae – Erastian

And Presbyterian (both, in fact, Pelagian),

Through schools submissive to the harsh contagion

Of SS training camps commando courses,

Through mastery of ships, tanks, aircraft horses

(Though there his sister Anne carries the banner),

The uncondescending condescending manner,

Indeed the whole damned tough Encyclopaedia

Monarchica to bludgeons from the media –

Smiles of a playboy, morals of a monk:

One cherry brandy made the whole press drunk

Now nota bene: James’s spleen is shown

To the dirt-throwers never to the Throne.

Approving of the monarchy, its semper

Eadem, out of temper with the temper

Of Irish, wops and polacks in Australia

Who think the crown an old hat and a failure:

And can’t equate corruption with republics,

Demos, thinks James (here is his poem’s nub) licks

The dictatorial arse when kings and queens

Don’t give demotic lips and tongues the means

To kiss blue veins in dreams or, waking, cry:

‘God save the…’. James is right and so am I.

Funny enough, his book. You’ll meet them all:

Lady Jane Wellyboot, Lord Butterball,

Lord Nikon and Dame Helen Gardenome,

Esther Hotpantz (who’s she when she’s at home?),

Mark Pillocks, Shirley Whirley, Lord Lambchop,

AJP Tailspin, the whole butcher’s shop

And Lady Diana Seethrough-Spiffing ‘belle

Of the ball… no iced Pom sheila’, she as well.

A nice poetic tribute to the Prince.

Little to make Cape’s libel lawyers wince.

And there’s another rhapsody to come –

The Laureate’s epithalamium.

Though, since John Betje is a thrifty man,

He may retread the one for Princess Anne –

‘Glow white lily in London – ’ No, not that:

Charles is no flaming lily. And that’s flat:

At least one dinkum digger makes it clear,

So up with schooners down with the pig’s ear,

Rejoice with James and for Prince Charles a cheer.

FIVE REVOLUTIONARY SONNETS

From the novels

Inside Mr Enderby

and

Enderby Outside

1

Sick of the sycophantic singing, sick

Of every afternoon’s compulsory games,

Sick of the little cliques of county names,

He let the inner timebomb start to tick –

Beating out number. As arithmetic

The plot took shape – not from divided aims,

But short division only. Then, in flames,

He read: ‘That flower is not for you to pick.’

Therefore he picked it. All things thawed to action,

Sound, colour. A shrill electric bell

Summoned the guard. He gathered up his faction,

Poised on the brink,