ABBA ABBA

by Anthony Burgess

  Only a few weeks after did our Virgin see

  The need to make a matrimonial match,

  To build a nest wherein the egg could hatch

  (Her little belly had begun to burgeon, see.)

  It was, therefore, a matter of some urgency.

  She didn't seek the freshest of the batch;

  The one she gave her hand to was no catch,

  But any port will do in an emergency.

  The foolish gossips gossiped at the feast:

  "She might have got a younger one at least,

  Not an old dribbler frosty in the blood."

  But that old dribbler dribbling by the side

  Of such a beautiful and youthful bride

  Found his dry stalk was bursting into bud.

  The Visit

  Mary received, while burning Joseph's toast,

  A letter. "Who the hell -?" (under her breath),

  Aloud: "It's cousin Saint Elizabeth."

  Elizabeth, it seemed, could also boast

  A pregnancy, though not from the Holy Ghost.

  Still, her next birthday was her sixtieth.

  Though travel then was slow expensive death,

  "We're coining," Mary wrote, then caught the post.

  They went. After a short magnificat,

  The women were soon chattering away

  Of swellings, morning sickness, and all that.

  Joseph decided that he'd like to stay

  A month or so, and so hung up his hat

  Better than sawing wood all bloody day.

  The Magi

  From a far country – how far? Very far:

  It grows, for instance, cinnamon and cocoa -

  Three kings, their robes rococo or barocco,

  Followed their leader – viz., that big bright star.

  Each Magus had, like any czar or tsar,

  Guards, steeds, a page, a clown with painted boko,

  Coaches, a camel, and in leisured loco-

  Motion they swayed towards where the Hebrews are.

  They reached the stable with their caravan

  One morning, evening, noon or afternoon,

  With gifts – incense for God, and myrrh for man.

  For Christ as king they had a gold doubloon -

  Proper, they thought, for the top Christian.

  They were, it seems, some centuries too soon.

  Circumcision

  Our Lady had a painful Christmas Day

  And heaven the monopoly of mirth.

  Between an ox and ass she brought to birth

  A stableboy that stank of rags and hay.

  His substitutive dad had to obey

  The Jewish law, so look the Lord of Earth

  Templewards, to have half a farthingsworth

  Of hypostatic foreskin cut away.

  Thirty years later saw the blessed Lord on

  A journey to the rolling river Jordan

  To be baptised by Mary's cousin's son.

  A Christian man thus sprang from a prepuceless

  Jew. I call most turncoats fucking useless

  But make a rare exception for this one.

  The Living Prepuce

  That sacred relic, by the way, was hid

  And either kept in camphor or else iced.

  It grew so precious it could not be priced.

  And then one day His Holiness undid

  A holy box and raised a holy lid -

  Behold – the foreskin of our saviour Christ,

  Shrimplike in shape, most elegantly sliced,

  At last to profane eyes exhibited.

  In eighty other Christian lands they show

  This self-same prize for reverent eyes to hail.

  You look incredulous, my friend. But know

  That faith, though buffeted, must never fail.

  The explanation's this: God let it grow

  After the clipping, like a fingernail.

  The Slaughter of the Innocents 1

  Joseph was doing bull-roars on his back,

  A dream corrida crowd was yelling "Toro!"

  He slept cut off from coming care and sorrow,

  Making the stable shake with roar and rack.

  But then an angel dealt him a rough smack

  And said: "You know what day it is tomorrow?

  The twenty-eighth. I managed, see, to borrow

  A copy of the current almanac."

  Herod announced the Feast of Childermass.

  Joseph rushed out and had to pay a pretty

  Price (how he cursed) for an old spavined ass:

  A carpenter would rather gyp than be gypped.

  And so they moved off mouselike towards Egypt,

  Missing a lively day in David's city.

  The Slaughter of the Innocents 2

  King Herod now, to minimal applause,

  Ordered the babies to be stuck like swine.

  There was an uproar then in Palestine

  And not, O Jesus help us, without cause.

  Those who had seen this coming did not pause

  To hide their babes, but let them croon or whine

  As visible as laundry on the line,

  While they had masses said to Santa Claus.

  Their saviour (saviour?) halfway to the delta

  Smelt nothing of the filthy bloody welter

  Nor heard the parents curse or ululate.

  The troops of Herod smote and did not spare

  But with each crack a splinter sought the air

  And feebly tapped on heaven's heavy gate.

  Baptism

  When he was old enough for politics

  Jesus went splashing on the Jordan's bed.

  He ceased to be a Jew and joined instead

  The Apostolic Roman Catholics.

  Then he went dropping homilies like bricks.

  "He who seeks heaven with an unwashed head

  Will see the kingdom with his arse," he said,

  Shouting the odds, wagging his crucifix.

  Only his mother got there unbaptised,

  Which proves she waved goodbye to mother earth

  A good Jewess, staunch in the faith and steady.

  Heaven had got her soul well organised:

  Why rub and scrub a thing that came to birth

  As white as someone's laundry line already?

  A Wedding at Cana 1

  The guests at Cana, vinously aswim,

  Aroar for more, found every bloody butt

  Was empty, and the liquor stores were shut.

  The innkeeper, fired by a roguish whim,

  Had three casks filled with water to the brim,

  Then told each sozzled fuddled serving slut

  To lug them where, importantly astrut,

  The host was, and to leave the rest to him.

  Christ was a guest, dressed in his best apparel,

  But the host begged a sort of magic act

  Through Mary: "Make him turn this lot to wine."

  Mary replied: "I know this son of mine -

  Moody. But if I speak to him with tact

  You'll get, maybe, a quarter of a barrel."

  A Wedding at Cana 2

  And so she begged an instant grapeless wine.

  But Jesus, who was hardly yet adult,

  Sighed like a stone leaving a catapult

  And scowled: "This problem's neither yours nor mine,

  Mother. Permit me coldly to decline

  To help these boozers. Easy or difficult

  Is not the point. Let the fat host consult

  Some other thaumaturge, the smirking swine.

  Just so some soak can blurt a drunken toast

  Or swill the teeth he's sunk into a roast,

  You want me to work miracles and such,

  To get a toothcomb and go combing out

  The various troubles lurking all about.

  I've troubles of my own, thanks very much."

  A Wedding at Cana 3

  Jesus, I think (Christ rest his spiri
t), chose a

  Tantrum like that one not to be unkind

  But to show off. A young man is inclined

  To blow his trumpet oftener than his nose. A-

  Las, Our Lady, so says the composer

  Of this instructive rhapsody, repined.

  She'd had maternal victory in mind

  But now became the Mater Dolorosa.

  I sometimes wish this story had not happened;

  But heed its lesson, if you heed no other:

  Try not to be the big loud man too soon.

  God heard the answer that he gave his mother,

  Determined on a right reproving rap and

  Lathered his arse one Friday afternoon.

  Anger

  Jesus forgives all sins – or nearly all:

  Usury, anger, greed, the knife thrust under

  The ribs, robbery, calumny, lying, plunder

  Of land condoned by rogues in the town hall.

  Only on one occasion did he fall

  Into a rage that tore him near asunder

  And made him roar with true Jehovan thunder

  And bounce in bloody anger like a ball,

  And that was when he saw the Church done wrong to.

  He took a whip with many a knotted thong to

  The moneychangers preying on those praying at the temple.

  This is the only place in Holy Writ

  Where Christ is shown as throwing a mad fit.

  He aged with righteous rage and started greying at the temple.

  Martha amp; Mary

  Martha said: "Christ, I'm full up reet to' t' scupper

  Wi' Mary there." She belted out her stricture:

  "Rosaries, masses – it fair makes you sick to your

  Stomach. Stations o't' Cross. I'm real fed up. A

  Carthorse I am, harnessed neck and crupper

  While she does nowt. About time this horse kicked you

  Right in the middle of your holy picture, Mary.

  Go on, now. Say it: What's for supper?"

  "Martha, O Martha," sighed the blessed Saviour,

  "You've no call to get mad at her behaviour.

  She's on the right road, and you're out of luck."

  "The right road, aye," said Martha. "Why, if I

  Went on like her, this house would be a sty,

  And she'd not see the right road for the muck."

  Communion

  With the Last Supper finished and the waiter

  Ready to clear, Christ took a loaf of bread,

  Blessed it, then fed it to the already fed,

  Making each eater a communicator.

  He even gave some to his darling traitor,

  Proving his mood was rosy, not yet red

  (Judas Iscariot, who lost his head

  And went to play at swings a little later).

  But, friendly as he was, the Master knew

  His passion hour was coming, hot and hellish,

  So made a good confession, to embellish

  His church with not one sacrament but two.

  There then remained one holy thing to do -

  To eat himself, with little or no relish.

  Christ amp; Pilate

  After they'd knotted Jesus up with rope,

  Judas assisting, damned and dirty dastard,

  After the high priest's bullies, who had mastered

  The spitting art, had given it full scope,

  After the maids and grooms had heard the Pope

  Say: "I don't give a fuck about the bastard",

  They led our Lord to Pilate's alabastered

  Hand-washing room, already sweet with soap.

  This was a case Pilate could not refuse.

  He saw the filth of it but might not shed it -

  A swine, yes, but a clean swine, to his credit.

  He said: "You're Jesus, then, king of the Jews?"

  Christ sought not to deny, affirm or edit,

  But looked him in the eye and said: "You've said it."

  At the Pillar 1

  Bare as a Briton auctioned into slavery,

  Lashed to a post, Jesus, from head to feet,

  Beaten by bastards who knew how to beat.

  Yielded his skin to graduates in knavery.

  No spot was spared. He ended an unsavoury

  Blue-green-vermilion chunk of dirty meat,

  The sort that's bought for cats and dogs to eat

  From fly-buzzed butchers' barrows in Trastevere.

  No spot spared? Well, I did some small research

  Into that very whipping post, that's placed,

  As is well known, in St Prassede's church,

  And found it didn't come up to my waist.

  So, though Christ's limbs, loins, face, flanks, belly shared

  Foul blows, his sitteth-on-God's-right was spared.

  At the Pillar 2

  You've seen a felon in the public pillory

  Having his buttocks beaten to a mash,

  And much admired his cool disdainful dash,

  The muscles firm – both gluteal and maxillary

  (Aided no doubt by draughts from the distillery).

  But now consider Christ beneath the lash,

  Deafened by the incessant crash and slash

  Of leather, sticks, the whole damned crude artillery.

  Consider how each whipstroke gashes, galls

  Ribs, shoulders, flanks, how bits of torn flesh keep

  Falling away, as, say, boiled mutton falls

  From the bone. But does the victim whine or weep?

  No. Though all that is left him is his balls.

  He merely counts the strokes, like counting sheep.

  Pity

  How can you think of Christ without a sob?

  Dropped like a beast in a foul nest of straw,

  Forced, as a boy, with hammer, pliers, saw

  To slave away at a woodworker's job,

  A youth, he walked the world with grumbling maw,

  Preaching the word to a disdainful mob,

  A man, he had a price upon his nob,

  And Judas sold him to the Roman law.

  The spit, the lash, the doom, the thorny crown,

  The nails, the cross, the vinegar-soaked rag

  Tied to a pole, the diced-for bloody gown:

  All burdens fell upon him, sacred bag

  Of bones – hence the old saying handed down:

  Flies always settle on a spavined nag.

  Two Kinds of Men

  We come into this world bedecked in shit,

  Some of us anyway, including Jesus.

  But others are born rich as fucking Croesus,

  Mightily proud, mightily proud of it.

  The crown, the coronet, the mitre fit

  Men for whom earth gushes out gold like geysers,

  While we are lemons ready for the squeezers,

  Scarred nags for spurs, bare backsides to be hit.

  If Christ was one of us, why did he give in

  Such plenty palaces for those to live in,

  Making us stew in filth and sweat and pus?

  Why, even on the cross, in the last flood

  Of pain, it was for them he gushed forth blood

  But trickled bloody water out for us.

  Guilt

  There's a whole race that seems to merit hell

  Because the bloody reprobates refuse

  To join the Church of Rome – I mean the Jews.

  They let Christ die upon the cross as well.

  Still, as some learned Jewish rabbis tell,

  There is a circumstance that one may choose,

  If one's fair-minded, that can near-excuse

  The dozen errant tribes of Israel.

  When Christ went to fulfil his metier,

  He knew Good Friday was his destined day:

  Death was a big word in his lexicon.

  Doomed-to-be-slain (put it another way)

  Must meet a complementary doomed-to-slay.

  Some
body had to take that business on.

  Limbo

  When Jesus rose triumphant from the tomb,

  Defying natural law as well as Roman,

  He whizzed down like a shot shot by a bowman

  And dragged the holy souls from Limbo's gloom.

  Then Purgatory started to assume

  The place of rhubarb in a sick abdomen;

  Masses were sold like tickets by a showman -

  Twin innovations that are still in bloom.

  The angels, after brooding wings akimbo,

  Put infant souls, baptised in milk and piss

  But not the font, into that empty Limbo.

  It wasn't meant to last, of coarse, and when

  The Last Trump offers only blaze or bliss,

  Christ knows where the young bastards will go then.

  Christ in Hell

  The Creed says Christ descended into Hell.

  What could his Father have been thinking of,

  Sending him there? Is that paternal love?

  Jesus in Hell. Christ Jesus. Hell. Well, well,

  For my part faith and candour both compel

  My stating that the buggers up above -

  Not God but government – desired to shove

  Christ in that ill-appointed hot hotel.

  Jesus in Hell. O Jesus Christ in Hades.

  Ever since earth was earth and sky was sky,

  A finer gentleman, gentlemen, ladies,

  Was never picked to whip and crucify

  Than Jesus. Let's believe that when he made his

  Trip it was just hello and then goodbye.

  Doubt

  When Christ rose up, those somewhat timid gentry