Quiet as a moving munching herd of cows. And
As dancers on the stage taking their bows and
Boos in an endless belt endlessly fill it, s-
O this small troop marched in a circle till its
300 men looked damned near like 3000.
Ta-rah, ta-ray – clash pans, flash torches. Flustered,
And deafened as 300 brass are mustered,
The enemy collapses like a custard.
Such thrift! Today we have our martial brawls,
Our soldiers heed the bugle when it calls
And waste 300 fucking cannon-balls.
34. THE FOXES
The Bible is quite verminous with foxes.
Samson caught hundreds and, with foxy cunning,
Tied torches to their tails and set them running
Through his foes’ harvest-fields – thus, with hot proxies,
Saving them sweat. Still, they wished ninety poxes
Upon him and increased their vengeful gunning.
Though vermin then, where are they now? They’re shunning
Our hounds, like bishops shunning heterodoxies.
We ought to want them, since they stank of virtue
When Samson used them against naughty men.
But still an eggless henless world would hurt you
More than a foxless. If he came back again
With scores of foxes sniffing round his skirt, you
Would say: ‘I’d rather have a fucking hen.’
35. GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES (1)
Of all the Bible stories that they tell,
This one to come is quite the most fantastic.
A sonnet being so damned inelastic,
I’ll require two to tell it really well.
Well, now – the exodists from Egypt’s hell
Met the mad Malechites who, dreadful, drastic.
Ferocious, tastelessly enthusiastic,
Fell on the Hebrews, and the Hebrews fell.
God made a memorandum. After all,
The Jews pursued the then correct religion.
After four hundred years he called on Saul.
‘The Malechites,’ he said, ‘deserve the axe.
Spit the whole nation; roast it like a pigeon.
Don’t leave a feather on their fucking backs.’
36. GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES (2)
So in God’s name Saul went and waded in,
Trouncing them in one horrible stampede,
Goats, calves and all. Mercy maybe or greed
Or something made him save Prince Agag’s skin.
Samuel now prophesied about Saul’s sin!
‘Idolater, betrayer of our creed,
A holier Israelite will supersede
Your reign and make a holier reign begin.
Bring me the prince you blasphemously spared.’
Tremulous as a fatted pig, that prince
Stuttered – agagagag aghast, shit-scared.
The holy Samuel did not blink or wince
But raised the butcher’s blade that he had bared
And made a mound of Malechitish mince.
37. DAVID’S DUEL
How powerful is God’s arm! He sent a boy
To fight Goliath, who was tough and scary,
Who swallowed foes like oysters of the prairie
And thought he’d stamp on David like a toy.
But God wished Israel to yell with joy
To know that every flabby, weak, unhairy
Weed that loves Jesus and his mother Mary
Finds giants rather easy to destroy.
Seeing the stone and sling and stripling shepherd,
Goliath cried: ‘You little prick, you’ve gone a
Mite too far,’ and tensed up like a leopard.
But David blessed the saints and the Madonna,
Measured his fireline, fired his pebble up it
And saw Goliath crumple like a puppet.
38. HOLY KING DAVID
King David’s later life? The stories vary.
It seems, though, his prophetic eye was sharp,
He spoke with God, he much preferred the bar-p-
Arlour to the coffee-shop or dairy.
Jesus, of David’s seed through holy Mary,
For David was a very pericarp,
Had his gab-gift, but could not play the harp
Nor sing like David, King Saul’s prize canary.
The Bible gives a fairish bona fide
Account of him, although it’s hard to follow:
The story is elliptical, untidy.
You’ll learn, however, that he loved to wallow
In love, and frot until his balls were hollow,
From Saturday till pretty late on Friday.
39. THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON
Solomon’s judgment. So. It makes you laugh.
But could a judge upon a modern bench,
Nose lifted high against the rabble’s stench,
For all his wigs and tomes and courtroom staff,
Do better? He, drained like his own carafe,
Hearing one wench scream at the other wench
In language that would make a bargee blench,
Could only say: ‘Let’s chop the child in half.’
The parish register was plain to see,
You say. He could have checked on her or her name,
The date and place of birth of son or daughter.
Fool. In those days nobody had a surname,
And parish registers came in A.D.,
When Christ had shown a brand-new use for water.
40. THE FAIR JUDITH
The Holy Bible tells how the seduc-
Tive Judith feasted Holofernes, winner
Of the late bloody war. They finished dinner,
She doused the lights. He, leering at his luck,
Leapt on her unresisting. Then she struck
His head off with a sword and cried: ‘Foul sinner,’
(His milk still frothing to the boil within her)
‘Now he could find some blacker hole to fuck.’
She heaved the head up in her lily hand,
Though it was heavy, horrible and gory,
And did a tour of triumph through the land.
I find two morals in this sacred story:
(a) prove your faith by killing people and
(b) be a bloody whore for heaven’s glory.
41. GUESSING GAME
The chaste Susannah – what was she chased for?
Her beauty, yes, but was there something more?
The sort of reputation that she bore?
You said the word, not I: the word is w—e.
Those old men said it too (Aaaarh, nothing’s lower
Than watching at a lady’s bathroom door).
But Daniel caught them out. His lion-roar
Condemned their heads, not hers, to hit the floor.
Chaste, was she? Hm, perhaps she couldn’t bring
Herself to fancy two limp bits of string.
A woman’s nature’s nature in the spring.
To get to know it, cease your pondering,
Slap on your chest two puddings in a sling
And let your haunches launch into a swing.
42. BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST
Belshazzar, drunk, observed a kind of smoke
Resolve itself to something vaguely manual
Writing upon the wall. He called on Daniel.
‘Many tickle your arse – What’s this – a joke?’
The ambiguous bilge that Daniel then spoke
Made less sense than the yapping of a spaniel.
‘Weighed in the balance to the utmost granule,
Found wanting.’ Why not just ‘You’re going to croak’?
All right, that’s not a literal translation.
But what came next was no big fat surprise:
Belshazzar didn’t live to eat his breakfast.
A prophet, scared of sti
cking out his neck, fast-
Idious about his reputation,
Ought to be told that riddles are damned lies.
43. THE EIGHTH OF DECEMBER
Serious talk now; let’s not arse about.
December eight – what do we celebrate?
Come on, you know. Good – the Immaculate
Conception. When that apple-loving lout
Adam first took it in his head to flout
The Lord’s law, angels said: ‘Evacuate,’
And firmly locked the paradisal gate,
Keeping his maculate descendants out.
Poor Mother Nature, ever since that ban,
Cannot breed even half a child that’s blameless.
There boils within the rising prick of man
The seed of something terrible though nameless.
So praise to Joachim who, with Saint Ann,
Achieved a fuck that was uniquely shameless.
44. THE ANNUNCIATION
You know the day, the month, even the year.
While Mary ate her noonday plate of soup,
The Angel Gabriel, like a heaven-hurled hoop,
Was bowling towards her through the atmosphere.
She watched him crash the window without fear
And enter through the hole in one swift swoop.
A lily in his fist, his wings adroop,
‘Ave’, he said, and after that, ‘Maria.
Rejoice, because the Lord’s eternal love
Has made you pregnant – not by orthodox
Methods, of course. The Pentecostal Dove
Came when you slept and nested in your box.’
‘A hen?’ she blushed, ‘for I know nothing of –’
The angel nodded, knowing she meant cocks.
45. THE MADONNA’S MARRIAGE
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.
46. THE VISIT
Mary received, while burning Joseph’s toast,
A letter. ‘Who the hell – ?’ (under her breath),
Aloud: ‘Ah – 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 coming’, 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.
47. EPIPHANY
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.
48. THE 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 law, so took 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.
49. CHRIST’S FORESKIN
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.
50. THE FLIGHT OF THE HOLY FAMILY
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.
51. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS
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.
52. ORIGINAL SIN
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?
53. THE 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.’
54. THE 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.’
55. THE WEDDING AT CANA (3)
Jesus, I think (Christ rest his spirit), 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
Collected Poems Page 6