Collected Poems

by Anthony Burgess

Apt for the giver of the blow, but blood came,

  Rippling through Aaron’s beard, first blood. Aaron bowed,

  Humble, submissive to the pattern. But his word travelled

  Quickly enough. Israelite insolence, to the palace,

  And one 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, in a day or so, of the petitions.

  A royal pavilion, with pennants, a throne, effigies,

  Trumpeters, drummers, the whole court in attendance,

  On a bank where the Nile narrowed, the
water muddy,

  Turbulent over a bed of slippery stones.

  And on the opposed bank the suppliants,

  With petitions for the Pharaoh, waited in the heat,

  Swatting flies with palm-fronds. Aaron and Moses

  Waited with them. After hours of waiting,

  Trumpets sounded, and a herald spoke:

  ‘Whatsoever person desires to present his

  Petition to the most sacred majesty of the Pharaoh,

  The divine Mernefta, must do so as follows. He must

  Step into the sacred waters and be purified.

  Thus purified, he may proceed to the royal shore.’

  Trumpets, then trumpets, drums, cymbals as

  Pharaoh himself, well-attended, came to his throne.

  On his throne, he saw many eyes quick to avert themselves

  From blinding majesty, but the eyes of Moses

  Were not averted. The suppliants entered the water

  And, as was foreseen, stumbled, slithered,

  Crawled back again, some, to their own bank,

  While the court grinned, laughed when one old man

  Had to be saved from drowning. Pharaoh smiled,

  Perhaps dutifully, but he did not smile

  When Moses and Aaron, upright among the slitherers,

  Trod the river-bed towards him, Aaron crying:

  ‘Pharaoh… We humbly request… that your majesty

  Accede to our…’ The king signed to the herald,

  And the herald signed to the captain of trumpeters,

  And the trumpeters blasted forth, so the words of Aaron,

  Save for ‘strike’ and ‘punish’ and ‘revenge’,

  Were smothered, and all speech and laughter smothered

  When the drums and cymbals added their clamour. The eyes of Moses,

  The eyes of one who had foreseen all, held steady

  And now Pharaoh avoided them. But those eyes turned,

  Again as one who had foreseen, upstream where a

  Man cried soundlessly, and the eyes of Pharaoh

  Followed. The man was as though painted red,

  And viscous red ran from him and he shouted.

  Pharaoh stilled the clamour of the silver and skin,

  And the shout was heard: ‘Blood. The water has turned to

  Blood.’ Laughter, and then not laughter.

  For red was tumbling, sluggish at first, downstream,

  Then bubbling over the stones, and the smell

  Was, without doubt, the smell of blood. Moses and Aaron

  Stood as it surged about them, let the others,

  Terrified, crying It’s blood blood the water has

  Turned to blood, slither and stumble out, stood till

  Pharaoh himself came down to the river-verge and

  Dipped his hand in. Blood. His eyes found the eyes of Moses,

  And they said, surely: ‘Clever, cousin Moses.

  But no more clever than my own

  Magicians can do.’ And then they looked on blood.

  Servants rushed with towels, wiping off the blood

  From the royal hand, throwing the towels in

  Blood, the towels filling with blood, floating sluggishly,

  While the cry of blood blood went on, and Moses and Aaron

  Strode through blood, their backs to Pharaoh,

  Back to their bank. And now, all along the Nile bank,

  The cry or scream was blood, and in the fountains

  Blood seethed and frothed, but in the wells of Pithom

  Water sang clear. Then, from the waterways

  Which were now boiling bloodtides, the frogs came croaking,

  Blood on their skin, frogs countless, in droves,

  With a deafening croaking, on to the land, advancing.

  Water blood, and the land all frogs, then the air

  Filling with gnats, beasts and men

  Thrashing and screaming, the sky black with gnats.

  At the core of maddened Egypt, fires burning

  To keep off the gnats, in a gauze tent

  In a room of the palace, the chief magician used words,

  Reasonable words, to calm the ministers, saying:

  ‘Maintain, my lords, a scientific approach.

  Approach by way of reality, by observation,

  Analysis, never by way of theory. You ask:

  Is it blood? If blood, whose blood? I reply:

  That is not to the purpose. The substance, true,

  Behaved like blood, smelt, tasted like it.

  Whose blood? That is no question for the

  Physical investigator. Think now. There are records

  Of mud-pollution on the Nile, followed inevitably

  By an immediate exodus of creatures that live

  And breed in clear water. Swarms of frogs and gnats –

  Inevitable. We may expect also flies, locusts,

  A murrain on the cattle – all stemming from

  The pollution, by whatever cause, of the river.

  You ask: is the blood, or whatever it is, a product

  Of thaumaturgical conjuration? I say in reply:

  The term has never been adequately defined. Miracle,

  Magic – what do the words, scientifically considered,

  Really mean? But, my lords, we have to remember

  That this perverse and defecting Moses is, by upbringing,

  Education, an Egyptian. He has had, doubtless, access

  To obscure lore which, in this age of stability

  And power, has never had to be invoked

  Against enemies. To talk, as some are doing,

  Of the magical potency of a new god, a god moreover

  Of an enslaved people, is, to say the least,

  Premature. Again, you ask: how is it that the

  Israelites remain immune from these – nuisances?

  The reason, my lords, may well be geographical.

  Goshen, remember, is some way from the Nile,

  Sheltered, removed from the causative pollution.

  How dark it is getting.’ It was true.

  They peer through their mesh at thickening air. Flies.

  Thick, black, buzzing irritably, flies.

  Clouds of flies. But none in Pithom. There

  Aaron addressed the elders, saying: ‘The signs are before you.

  Can you harbour further doubts? I know, I know

  It is hard to take in. The God of the universe

  Has chosen a people weak, enslaved, hopeless,

  Indolent.’ – ‘Chosen for what?’ said one. And Aaron:

  ‘For the working out of his divine purpose on earth.

  So it would seem. We must not ask too much.

  What we must rather do is gird our loins,

  Prepare for the coming of the day.’ But an elder said:

  ‘The day, you mean, of leaving a bondage that has become –

  Well, all that some of us have known. We are old.

  It is hard to face the new life. It is a hard God,

  This God of yours, ours.’ But Aaron cried:

  ‘We must learn to think of ourselves as a people,

  Not as mere tribes, families, lone beings with

  Individual sufferings. Many of us

  May be discarded on the way – worn-out, useless –

  But the people goes on, the race continues. They that

  End the journey may not be those that began it.

  We are all one, and the dead and the yet unborn

  Share in the common purpose, the common goal.’

  And one said: ‘I don’t like this sort of talk at all.

  It’s all blown-up, like a sheep’s stomach full of wind.

  Life is, life is what we see, smell, feel –

  The taste of a bit of bread, a mouthful of water,

  Sitting at the door, watching the evening come on

  With the circling of the bats. The things you talk of

  Are only in the mind. We a
re too old, I tell you,

  For this talk of common goals and purposes and journeys.’

  And Aaron was angry, shouting: ‘You speak thus,

  When the Lord your God exerts himself beyond

  What may be thought of as proper for a God.

  For God has shown himself in the running blood of the

  Rivers, in the swarming gnats and flies.

  God leaves us unscathed and wholesome while all Egypt

  Screams. Does this mean nothing?’ And one said:

  ‘It means, I suppose, that we are the chosen people.

  Means we must face the desert and dream of the promise.

  It means – oh, is it so blasphemous

  To wish to be left alone?’

  Then came the locusts,

  Stripping the trees, save in the vale of Goshen,

  Where Pithom sat. And then came boils and ulcers,

  And lancings, and running of pus, the afflicted

  Wretched, waiting in line for the lancet, and the

  General wonder that things should be as they were.

  Had the gods failed Pharaoh? How could they fail

  One who was one of themselves? Was it some demon?

  But no demon could be mightier than the gods’

  Whole army. Pharaoh had done so much

  To the glory of the gods – opulent monuments.

  He had done for the gods far more than the

  Gods might reasonably expect to be done. The pyramids.

  Take the pyramids. To count the bricks in

  One pyramid alone would take up years. What then

  Had gone wrong? ‘They wonder’, Aaron said,

  In conclave in Pithom, ‘what has gone wrong. But they know

  That we remain untouched, this they know. They fear us.

  It is a new thing for the Israelites to be feared.’

  Miriam said: ‘We were always feared. If the Egyptians

  Had merely destroyed us, our memory still

  Would have been feared. There are many dead nations

  That growl out of their ashes. But they brought us low,

  They made us despised among nations. And the fear –

  How is it now expressed? They are already beginning

  To bribe us into leaving, to skulking out

  In the dark.’ And she looking at Dathan, who,

  In a corner of Aaron’s house, gloated over

  A little hoard of jewels and gold pieces,

  Egyptian bribes. Dathan said: ‘I shall be happy

  To take charge of all this side of our

  Operation. We need such resources presumably.

  Nor is there any need to wait to be given.

  One may take. Take. There are any number

  Of fine villas already abandoned. Death. The plague.

  I knew some of the victims well. Through my position.