Collected Poems

by Anthony Burgess

  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.

  56. THE HOUSE OF GOD

  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.

  57. MARTHA AND 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.’

  58. FIRST 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.

  59. CHRIST’S CROSS-EXAMINATION

  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.’

  60. CHRIST AT THE PILLAR

  Stripped naked like a candidate for 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.

  61. COURAGE

  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 of him is his balls.

  He merely counts the strokes, like counting sheep.

  62. ILL-STARRED

  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.

  63. THE TWO BREEDS

  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.

  64. GUILT IN THE GHETTO

  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 left home to work his métier,

  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.

  Somebody had to take that business on.

  65. L
IMBO

  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 saintly 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 course, and when

  The Last Trump offers only blaze or bliss,

  Christ knows where the young bastards will go then.

  66. 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.

  67. DOUBTING THOMAS

  When Christ rose up, those somewhat timid gentry

  His friends kicked up a noise, but one apostle –

  St Thomas – sang as loud as any throstle:

  ‘It’s an imposture. Obvious. Elementary.

  Anyway, how could he pass the fucking sentry?’

  Jesus meanwhile, unseen in the Easter jostle,

  Was making for their place at a colossal

  Speed, and he used the keyhole for his entry.

  He cried: ‘Poke in your finger, near this rib,

  And you’ll soon see whether I still exist

  Or the whole tale is just a fucking fib.’

  St Thomas came and shoved his great ham fist

  Into the hole. He then became as glib

  A Christian as he’d been a rationalist.

  68. WHITSUN

  You’ve seen the cook shove larding needles in

  Pork, lamb, beef or some other meaty treat,

  While seated on your trattoria seat,

  Hungry as hell and anxious to begin.

  Fat spits and bubbles underneath the skin,

  The very sizzle’s good enough to eat,

  And while the flame and fat and fibre meet,

  Saliva dribbles almost to your chin.

  This is one way to cook a fine fat pigeon,

  But not the dove of pentecostal peace.

  Dressed as a grilled lamb-tongue, this fluttered down

  And, to feed hungry bellies with religion,

  It cooked the eleven apostles good and brown

  Until they spat with holy grace or grease.

  69. SPREAD THE WORD

  When Jesus died, firm in the Christian creed,

  St Peter’s party picked up the Lord’s load

  And, staff in fist, they took the Cassia road

  And went about the world to sow their seed.

  Some sought – lazy, or fired to feed a need –

  Baccano and La Storta; others strode

  To Nepi, Monterosi, where they showed

  The Christian way of death in word and deed.

  Nay, more – to teach the good and ban and banish

  The bad, they went to lands where pagans chatter

  In Russian, German, English, French and Spanish.

  Their message was so simple, strong, unkillable,

  The fact they spoke Italian didn’t matter.

  No one misunderstood a single syllable.

  70. THE LAST DAYS

  When the long annals of the earth are done

  And Christ’s creation’s melted into shit,

  The Antichrist will crawl out of his pit

  And preach the dirty word to everyone.

  Cursed with a wall-eye that the blest will shun,

  A giant body and a face unfit

  Even to have tomatoes hurled at it,

  A prodigy, son of a monk and nun.

  He will be bashed by Enoch and Elia

  Elijah too – they’ll spring out of a hatch

  In St Paul’s church, between the nave and choir.

  Satan will slither up from hell to snatch

  His share, snarling it out with the Messiah.

  And earth will be a plucked up cabbage patch.

  71. THE LAST JUDGMENT

  At the round earth’s imagined corners let

  Angels regale us with a brass quartet,

  Capping that concord with a fourfold shout:

  ‘Out, everybody, everybody out!’

  Then skeletons will rattle all about

  Forming in file, on all fours, tail to snout,

  Putting on flesh and face until they get,

  Upright, to where the Judgment Seat is set.

  There the All High, maternal, systematic,

  Will separate the black souls from the white:

  That lot there for the cellar, this the attic.

  The wing’d musicians now will chime or blare a

  Brief final tune, then they’ll put out the light:

  Er-phwhoo. And so to bed. Owwwww. Bona sera.

  72. THE FATHER OF THE SAINTS

  Here are some names, my son, we call the cock:

  The chair, the yard, the large or little dick,

  The tool, rod of love, Hampton (Wick),

  Syringe, red robin, Brighton (Blackpool) rock,

  The fleshly comforter, the six o’clock,

  And Old Blind Bob, the prover, prior, prick,

  Jack Thursday, my best friend, the penal stick

  The old man, knobkerry, Kentish Knock.

  The jelif, truncheon, he, the lower nose,

  The cad monocular, the butcher’s lad,

  Will, bill, asperger, Holofernes, rose,

  The gism-engine, bishop, shagger, shad,

  The thruster, monkey, climber without toes,

  The sausage and our bad mad glad sad dad.

  But let me add

  That scholars, studying with midnight tapers,

  Use the term phallus in their learned papers.

  And one old man I know calls it Priapus.

  His wife has no name for it but a frown:

  A sign that life has somehow let her down.

  73. LOCAL INDUSTRY

  One day I reached the deepest of the dumps:

  I hadn’t got the nicked edge of a shillin.

  I thought of somethin that might work, God willin,

  So broke the kitchen shovel into lumps.

  Off to the cattle market. There was clumps

  Of tourists millin jabberin and shrillin

  ‘Dis is de Forum’. Where to make me killin?

  Some stupid English fart might turn up trumps.

  I found one. ‘Sir, just see wot ah dag ap

  In me backyard. It’s bin a lawnh tahm id –

  A riw aufentic Roman aunty quitty.’

  He flashed his winder on the bit of scrap

  And said ‘Bravo’ and give me arf a quid.

  That’s how we skin ’em in the Old City.

  74. ‘SPANIARDS’

  Spaniards believe that tuum’s less than meum.

  They come to Rome and find each thing inferior –

  Temple and castle, inside and exterior,

  Obelisk, fountain, column, church, museum,

  Even the papal singing of Te Deum,

  To anything they have in fair Iberia.

  It’s hell’s own job deflat
ing those superior

  Sneerers: (‘call that thing a colosseum?’)

  I got a bullock’s ballocks once and stowed them

  Inside a casket with an ornate lid

  Then met a Spaniard, saying as I showed them:

  ‘Adam’s, se˜nor.’ He blanched a bit and did

  The homage that he thought I thought he owed them,

  Then yawned: ‘We have his third one in Madrid.’

  75. ‘WORK’

  Work? Work? Me work? The thought of working puts

  Me into a sweat. They never have agreed,

  Have work and me. There’s other things I need

  Than work. No work then, and no ifs and buts.

  Before I get some dinner in my guts

  I’m much too weak to work,

  After I feed

  At half past twelve I like to crash my swede.

  Work? Stuff it where the monkeys stuff their nuts.

  Work’s holy? Holy? Work? You twat, you should

  Look at our priests. Their boss, I heard one say,

  Worked for a week and went on strike for good.

  For up above, they’re up above such stunts

  As work. The saints play with their balls all day,

  While the saintesses sit and scratch their cunts.

  76. THE BET

  Some men were arguing, as men often will,

  About their wives. And each with each one vied.

  Over his beer, with a grim sort of pride,

  Saying: ‘Mine’s ugly.’ – ‘But mine’s uglier still,’

  Comparing photographs. ‘Ah, but if looks could kill,

  My missis could effect mass homicide.

  Just look.’ But Albert, with no picture, cried:

  ‘Ugly? Come home with me and feast your fill.’

  A bet, then? Right. The money was not lacking,

  A pound a man. Their winter breaths asmoke,

  They homed with him when ‘Time please’ sent them packing.

  ‘Get ready, missis.’ From upstairs she spoke:

  ‘Am I to hide me face wi’ piece of sacking?’

  ‘Nay,’ he called, ‘it’s a bet, lass, not a poke.’