Collected Poems

by Anthony Burgess

  Of the living Moses echoed: For the Lord

  Thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

  Rome,

  March 9, 1974

  POEMS WRITTEN FOR ST WINEFRED’S WELL

  ‘And If There Be No Beauty, If God Has Passed Some By’

  WINEFRED:

  And if there be no beauty, if god has passed some by

  In beauty giving, what then? Hare lip, wall eye,

  Limbs shrunken? Beauty’s giver will be blind to them,

  Will cast them to the pit. What then?

  Beauty is in the doing, beauty is not being

  As for what you speak of – shining hair, feel of primrose skin,

  For what they are, for what I have of them,

  Were they but in my gift, you should have them freely.

  ‘Talk is Easy. Easiest for One Who’

  OTHER WOMAN:

  Talk is easy. Easiest for one who

  Would madly shut them away,

  Consign them to darkness

  You speak of beauty in the ghost!

  I would have beauty in the flesh.

  I am not yet a ghost.

  ‘Thank You. Enough, Brother Teryth’

  BEUNO:

  Thank you. Enough, brother Teryth,

  Please no ceremony.

  My Lord Bishop to the world I may be.

  Here I am back to being a boy with you.

  In this farm of our father’s, the smell of that burning pearwood

  Burns the years between – cancels Rome, Paris,

  The learning that has bent my back – the laying on of hands,

  the pastoral crook and mitre.

  Am come home for ever, but – alas –

  Only by proxy. Dirwan stays for the building of a chapel,

  A centre for holy mass.

  No more long trudging to Caws.

  ‘I Choose No Tail or Toy!’

  WINEFRED:

  I choose no tail or toy!

  Truth – a light that outdoes this sun.

  You will not understand –

  You do not believe.

  CARADOC:

  I believe what I see, touch, grope, wrestle with,

  What I possess, what I propose to possess

  By a man’s right –

  You are my right.

  ‘Say Nothing, Priest, Father, Mother’

  CARADOC:

  Say nothing, Priest, father, mother.

  I have said all, done all.

  This is Caradoc –

  A chieftain of this valley.

  THE PET BEAST

  Pasiphae would pacify a lust

  Grown beyond questioning.

  In Daedalus she knew at length she must

  Deposit trust:

  This was a thing she durst not tell the king.

  A wooden cow, she ordered, queenly. Why

  Not, the pared artisan

  Said inly, only bowing else. It is my

  Part to comply.

  He gathered tools and plywood and began.

  Why not a maze made from a ball of string,

  Why not a clockwork bird,

  Or birds wrought of stale breadcrumbs that can sing?

  Beyond questioning

  A royal statue, statute, though absurd.

  Minos the cold judged cases in his dreams.

  Awake, lithe at his task,

  The other whistled, sawing pliant beams.

  Law is what seems,

  The craftsman’s place to act and not to ask.

  The queen was to be bedded and then shut in

  (This was the queen’s idea)

  A box she might confess unholy rut in.

  The artist cut in

  A door there with a small foramen here.

  The king snored, a treeload of raven-calls

  Cried fear. The painted cow

  Was carried to the plain outside the walls.

  Mobled in shawls,

  The queen trod after, shivering somewhat now.

  She crouched darkling waiting enwombed in wood,

  Awake, asleep, adoze.

  Moon rise on empty grass. She started, could

  Through the eyed hood

  See pleniluned the distant dust that rose.

  She racked then on a sea whose spume was dust,

  The sea began to bleed,

  Its waves were snorts and roars. The white beast’s lust

  Rent in one thrust

  A womb grown sudden hands to grasp the seed.

  Moonset. And from the ruin hoofed apart

  She wanly signalled Come

  To slaves whom not that act but prescient art

  Hot as her heart

  Had rendered cruelly and coldly dumb.

  They bore her sleeping whither she must sleep

  Next to the snoring king.

  Daedalus had seen all, Daedalus must keep

  Silence asleep

  As dumbness. Daedalus had not seen a thing.

  She was a queen of cautions. Covertly

  Had seized his only son

  Who, walled beyond the feasibility

  Of recovery,

  Would be a hostage till her time was done.

  Or till no time. As human deeds were shut,

  Dried flowers, in books of law,

  So human will and love and pain were but

  Raw stuff to cut

  To the gods’ templates. That’s what men are for.

  She had done the gods’ will anyway. And now

  The royal days went on,

  The king his cases, queen her casing how

  She, calving cow,

  Would fare if he observed she was far gone.

  Myopic Minos, though, in books his eyes,

  But dry each nether eye

  After two daughters and no son. But wise

  To recognise

  Signs, changes, moods. And always spies to spy.

  After three moon-rolls she announced she would

  Spend winter in the south.

  He nodded, nodded, said he understood.

  The cold here. Good.

  The thing within shot acid to her mouth.

  SIGNS (DOGS OF PEACE)

  Earth remains. The ancient houses of men

  Stand or crumble, and then stand again,

  But always with blind windows, slow to start

  To bid goodbye to the young men who depart

  Into the world, the world where now I lie

  Smelling flower-smells and hearing from the sky

  The vapid news of birds, repeating We

  Can see the sea, can you too see the sea?

  Nonsense. Still sea remains, the jagged teeth

  Of hills beyond, the leagues and leagues beneath

  Of frond and fishlife and, above, of men,

  Who stand or crumble, and then stand again,

  Building a little life of talk and wine

  And wine and talk, wives, children. Come, a sign,

  Give us a sign. And what shall it signify?

  Nothing. Men must just signal or else die,

  Erecting signs, ejecting signs, in stores

  Purchasing signs and selling signs. Their pores

  Sweat signs. But signs of what? Ah come, resign

  Ourselves to this: a sign’s a sign’s a sign.

  Or, if you will, signs lead to other signs –

  Signposts mean signs lead to cities. See, the sun declines

  From his high noon on this – a southern town,

  The somnolence of afterlunch falls down

  Gentle, like dust, on young, old, and young-old.

  Cars move in stupor. Stories that are told,

  Ideas put forward, all allophones

  Of yawns. Unwilling as trundled stones.

  The great dead and the little living move

  Down time, down streets and prove – what do they prove?

  That signs are signs and signs are signs again.

  And dogs are as significant as men
.

  Men move, and women move, beneath the groin

  Of passages where quick and dead conjoin

  Looking for signs to sign some cosmic letter.

  Accept the universe – by God, you’d better.

  Accept this town, cede victoriam

  To horns that honk and honking cry I am.

  To clanking girders, trufflings in the earth

  To bring some new enormous sign to birth.

  Signs ride the streets, unnoticed in the shouts

  Of streetlife, see the daffodils put out

  Their signs, the fruit upon the barrows too.

  Be drunk with signs – what else is there to do?

  Yet, if you would ask, ask what colours mean.

  We mean ourselves no more, say red and green.

  But try this – take us all, the flame, the sky,

  The hue of flesh, the flash of the cat’s eye.

  Mix all these colours even and, how odd,

  The end’s a blank – or the white light of God.

  Any word, any image, will do

  To begin with. In the beginning was God.

  Why not Dog? In other language God ought to be

  Dnuh, enac, but it doesn’t

  Work in the other languages. But in English, yes.

  You can begin with God seen from the rear –

  That strange view vouchsafed to some prophet or other –

  Dog. Polytheism, polycynism – dogs. Looking up

  Down, unable to separate the Godmade from the manmade

  Artifact – all things equal – rooms, carpets, air,

  Water, gravel, piano, curtain, dogs.

  What makes men different from dogs? The hindleg habit,

  So that forepaws may hold drinks, the hebetude of the

  Sense of smell. A longer ritual before the act of

  Coupling. Dogs mark out territory through

  Golden libations. Men make cities.

  ‘AUGUSTINE AND PELAGIUS’

  He came out of the misty island, Morgan,

  Man of the sea, demure in monk’s sackcloth,

  Taking the long way to Rome, expecting –

  Expecting what? Oh, holiness, quintessentialized,

  Holiness whole, the wholesome wholemeal of,

  Holiness as meat and drink and air, in the

  Chaste thrusts of marital love holiness, and

  Sanctitas sanctitas even snaking up from

  Cloacae and sewers, sanctitas the effluvium

  From his Holiness’s arsehole. On the village road

  Trudging, dust, birdsong, dirty villages,

  Stops on the way at monasteries (weeviled bread,

  Eisel wine), always this thought: Sanctitas.

  What does thou seek in Rome, brother? The home

  Of holiness, to lodge awhile in the

  Sanctuary of sanctity, my brothers, for here

  Peter died, seeing before he died

  The pagan world inverted to sanctitas, and

  The very flagged soil is rich with the bonemeal

  Of the martyrs. And the brothers would

  Look at each other, each thinking, some saying:

  Here cometh one that only islands breed.

  What can flourish in that Ultima Thule save

  Holiness, a bare garment for the wind to

  Sing through? And not Favonius either but

  Sour Boreas from the pole. Not the grape,

  Not garlic not the olive, not the strong sun

  Tickling the manhood in a man, be he

  Monk or friar or dean or

  Burly bishop, big ballocks swinging like twin censers.

  Only holiness. God help him, God bless him for

  We look upon British innocence.

  And the British innocence.

  And the British innocent, hurtful of no man,

  Fond of dogs, a cat-stroker,

  Trudged on south – vine, olive, garlic,

  Brown tits jogging while brown feet

  Danced in the grapepress and the

  Monstrous aphrodisiac danced in the heavens

  Till at length he came to the outer suburbs and

  Fell on his knees O sancta urbs sancta sancta

  Meaning sancta suburbs and…

  But wherever he went in Rome, it was always the same –

  Sin sin sin, no sanctity, the whole unholy

  Grammar of sin, syntax, accidence, sin’s

  Entire lexicon set before him, sin.

  Peacocks in the streets, gold dribbled over

  In dark rooms, vomiting after

  Banquets of ostrich bowels stuffed with saffron,

  Minced pikeflesh and pounded larkbrain,

  Served with a sauce headily fetid, and pocula

  Of wine mixed with adder’s blood to promote

  Lust lust and again.

  Pederasty, podorasty, sodomy, bestiality,

  Degrees of family ripped apart like

  Bodices in the unholy dance. And he said,

  And Morgan said, whom the scholarly called Pelagius:

  Why do ye this, my brothers and sisters?

  Are ye not saved by Christ, are ye not

  Sanctified by his sacrifice, oh why why why?

  (Being British and innocent) and

  They said to him cheerfully, looking up

  From picking a peahen bone or kissing the

  Nipple or nates of son, daughter, sister,

  Brother, aunt, ewe, teg: Why, stranger,

  Hast not heard the good news? That Christ

  Took away the burden of our sins on his

  Back broad to bear, and as we are saved

  Through him it matters little what we do?

  Since we are saved once for all, our being

  Saved will not be impaired or cancelled by

  Our present pleasures (which we propose to

  Renew tomorrow after a suitable and well-needed

  Rest). Alleluia alleluia to the Lord for he has

  Led us to two paradises, one to come and the other

  Here and now. Alleluia. And they fell to again,

  To nipple to nates or fish baked with datemince,

  Alleluia. And Morgan cried to the sky:

  How long O Lord wilt thou permit these

  Transgressions against thy holiness?

  Strike them strike them as thou once didst

  The salty cities of the plain, as though

  Phinehas the son of Eleazar the son of Aaron

  Thou didst strike down the traitor Zimri

  And his foul whore of the Moabite temples Cozbi

  Strike strike. But the Lord did nothing.

  He strode in out of Africa, wearing a

  Tattered royal robe of orchard moonlight

  Smelling of stolen apples but otherwise

  Ready to scorch, a punishing sun, saying:

  Where is this man of the northern sea, let me

  Chide him, let me do more if

  His heresy merits it, what is his heresy?

  And a hand-rubbing priest, olive-skinned,

  Garlic-breathed, looked up at the

  Great African solar face to whine:

  If it please you, the heresy is evidently a

  Heresy but there is as yet no name for it.

  And Augustine said: All things must have a name

  Otherwise, Proteus-like, they slither and slide

  From the grasp. A thing does not

  Exist until it has a name. Name 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.