You talk of the big invisible God who has brought us
Out of Egypt and into the bondage of sheep-dung.
And they don’t understand.’ – ‘He will make them understand,
My brother.’ She said: ‘You used to be the great explainer.
He was supposed to be slow of speech. Well, talking
Is not enough now. What are you going
To do?’ Roused, he cried: ‘Will you understand
What I say now? I will show them what God is,
Not talk and explain, but show. They need an
Image for their poor minds to cling to. They must
See the strength of God. He carries the sun and the moon
On his brow. He has the power of all the
Beasts of the earth and yet he is gentle, loving.
But that is not God: it is but a picture of God.’ –
‘Time to get up,’ she said. ‘You have ruling to do.’
So that very morning the treasure hoard swung open,
And the gold and silver and jewels of the Israelites
Were brought in baskets joyously while Aaron explained
To the craftsmen and artists what was to be made. One art,
The art of song, was fired while the kiln was built
And the fire puffed within it, and the song was sung
By the people, joyous, their eyes at last to be fed
With something other than promises:
His head is the sun,
He carries the moon on his brow,
His limbs are the north, the west,
The east, the south,
And his breath the winds thereof.
His coat is speckled with the stars.
He strides in power over all the world.
Halleluiah halleluiah.
11
THE GOLDEN CALF
Out of the fire came an indeterminate lump
Of fused gold and silver, but mostly gold,
And the craftsmen worked on it: it became
An indeterminate beast with a crescent moon
On its brow like horns, so that a certain child
Cried: ‘That’s it – that what I saw that time
When we walked through the water – up in the sky it was,
A baby bull.’ The father said: ‘A calf, you mean,
A bull-calf. I see. Like that, was it? A heavenly bull-calf.’
And the parents smiled at each other: Children. Soon
On a rough tumulus the image was ready to be raised
And blocked into place with stone. Aaron was there,
And Aaron spoke to the people who watched, saying: ‘Listen,
Children of Israel, you have asked for gods.
You were wrong to do so, sinful indeed, but the sin
Sprang mostly from ignorance and from inability
To grasp what great thing has happened to us.’ (The craftsmen
Polished the back, the horns, the blunt muzzle.) ‘For what has happened
Is this: we have been chosen by God himself
– Not by gods, not even by a king of gods, but by God,
The one true indivisible God who made us
And made everything. At this moment my brother Moses,
Our leader, our giver of laws, is in converse with the
Voice of God on the mountain top. The voice he hears
Is perhaps his own voice, animated by God,
For God has no voice as a man has a voice. God
Has no body, God is in no one place.
God is spirit, and spirit is unshackled by the
Chains of time and space. God is everywhere.
The image you see before you is not God –
The very idea is absurd. But it will serve
To remind you of God, each day as you pass it. God
Is strength, and this is an image of strength – its head
The sun, the moon on its forehead, its limbs the four
Corners of the world. But it is a loving strength,
A mild strength, the strength of an eternal being
That will never use its strength against us.’ The child cried:
‘A bull-calf, that’s what it is,’ and the people smiled
And Aaron smiled, saying: ‘It is not what it looks like
That is important. What is important is that you
See in it an image of our unity as a people
Chosen by the one true God. At last the silver and gold
Of the Egyptians who enslaved us have been put to
Holy use – the profane made holy, remember that.
What was hidden away is now here to be seen by all
– The richness of a people’s unity – (And now there were jewels for eyes)
And the ultimate unthinkable richness of God himself,
Whose silver is the moon, whose gold the sun,
Whose jewels the eternal constellations of heaven.’
He smiled at the applause, but Miriam,
Standing near with her children, did not smile,
Nor smiled when, in huge moonlight, the young danced about it,
Singing:
Where will our wedding breakfast be?
Up in the fronds of a dikla tree.
What will we drink? What will we eat?
The moon for wine and the sun for meat.
As the old sat by, approving, a bit of life in the evening
Now. ‘It has become the centre of life,’ smiled Aaron.
‘A gathering place for talk and play. It is as if we were
Building a city.’ But Miriam said: ‘Not for long,
Not for that long. I saw some old men this morning
Touching it for luck, as they said. And there was a
Young man giving thanks.’ – ‘It is good to give thanks,’
Said Aaron. – ‘Thanks to an image?’ Miriam said.
‘His wish had come true, something to do with a girl,
And he said that thing was magical.’ – ‘Harmless, Miriam,
Harmless. A simple people needs something simple
To feed its senses.’ – ‘Wait,’ said Miriam. ‘Wait.’
And one evening, the moon still huge, Dathan and his wife
Sat drinking palm-wine, the three thieves with them, and he said:
‘Can you get any more of this stuff?’ – ‘What do we buy it with?’
Said the wall-eyed one. ‘That chunk of gold up there?’ –
‘Risky,’ said the angelic one. ‘I somehow doubt
That you’d get away with it.’ – ‘Well,’ Dathan said,
‘I’d rather drunk this than drink that smoke that the
Young ones drink, snuff up rather, that grass that grows
By the wall. Visions of golden cities,
That’s what it’s said to give you. Men of my age,
It makes us sick’. Dathan’s wife tipsily sang:
‘Where will our wedding breakfast be?’ – ‘I’d rather,’
Dathan said, ‘drink this than take that smoke stuff’.–
‘Some of the tribe of Judah,’ said the soldierly thief,
‘Mash up dates and add honey and water. It bubbles,
Bubbles you know.’ – ‘I suppose it’s against the law,’
Said the angelic thief, his gold hair moon-ensilvered. –
‘Nothing,’ Dathan said, ‘is against the law,
Because there is no law. It has to be written down,
Then it becomes law. Not that anybody can read it,
Except those that pretend they can. The bondage
Of unintelligible signs. That is well put,
Remember that.’ And Dathan’s wife went: ‘Unin-
Telligibubble.’ – ‘He’s coming down soon’,
Said the soldierly thief. ‘Still, I suppose it’s
Time we knew where we stood. Then we get the law.’ –
‘We ought to have a sort of celebration,’
Dathan said, ‘no
t when he gets here, but before.
I suppose he’ll have a law against celebrations,
All nicely carved out.’ – ‘What will we celebrate?’
Asked the angel. – ‘Oh’, said Dathan, ‘we’ll think of
Something or other’ – ‘Rother,’ giggled his wife.
But it was not till the new moon that something or other
Got into the people, helped by palm-wine, date-wine.
Some drunken women were singing Miriam’s song
About the effigy:
His strength is the strength of the bull that charges in thunder,
His wonder is in the flow of the seed of men.
Again and again, above in the sky and under
The sky, in gold noon and the moon’s gold,
His power and wonder are told.
Halleluiah halleluiah.
Some of the young sang their marriage song, and others
Drank smoke, while some of their elders kept to date-wine,
Date-wine. All very harmless: the young dancing about
The effigy, the old clapping their hands
To the rough music. Harmless enough perhaps
The fixing, by drunken women, to the effigy’s loins,
And Dathan swinging grinning with a pair of pomegranates.
But then the calf was jerked, to cheers, from its plinth,
Brought down to strong young shoulders, carried about
In song, while the tremulous old touched it, praying
For an end of the journey, for all to go well. Song
And a claw-buttock dance behind it, one young girl
Shedding her garments one by one in the dance,
Then by two young men, screaming and laughing.
Aaron and Miriam were far from all this, tending
A sick child in a distant tent, Aaron saying
(And the child was the child who had had the vision) to the mother:
‘The fever must come to its height. And then, we hope,
He will grow cool again. Give him nothing to drink
But bathe his forehead.’ – ‘Listen,’ Miriam said.
He listened, both listened. ‘So’, she said, ‘it is come.
God help us.’ They hurried, meeting on the way
Grave members of the tribe of Levi: We can do
Nothing. We always knew it was a
Grave mistake. Graven images. Aaron saw,
Miriam saw a woman, near naked, on the ground,
And the calf’s phallus in pretended hammering rut,
The calf in strong arms, and cheers and cheers,
The old, clawing buttocks, dancing, men and women,
Men and men, in a dance mime of sodomy,
The young, mad on the smoke they had drunk, dancing
Crazed dances of their own, a hugely corpulent
Sot draining, to cheers, a carboy of palm-wine,
And Caleb, crying for order, sense, near-trampled,
And other Levites brutally stricken with staves.
‘God help us,’ Miriam said. ‘You see what it is –
They are back to the worship of – Wasted, all wasted.’
‘I will speak to them’, Aaron said. ‘Let me mount the
Plinth.’ (Was that woman Zipporah, was that
Zipporah?) An obese matron, naked,
Pig-squealed, pleasured by a skeletal youth. Aaron smote,
Smote with his stave, mounting. ‘Listen,’ he cried.
‘Listen.’ And a few turned and groaned and cheered.
‘Brothers and sisters – children of Israel – listen.
Return to your dwelling at once, under pain of death.
Sin, sin – the Lord sees – the Lord will strike.’ Cheers,
And many were swift to drag him down, drowning his shouts,
Stripped him, thrust a jug of wine to his
Shouting mouth, dragged him into the throng.
(Far above, on Horeb, Joshua,
Tending his night fire, thought he heard revelling,
Riot, war. He turned to the cloud, heard a
Stronger noise of hammer and chisel on stone,
And a kind of – or did he imagine it only? –
Disheartened thunder.) Dancing, rutting,
The disrobing of a screaming boy by men who
Slavered in lust. Lust, drunken fighting,
And Dathan, drunk, screaming ecstatic: ‘There has to be
A sacrifice, the god wants a sacrifice’ pointing
Among cheers and growls to a trembling girl. Miriam
Stood in Aaron’s place, hardly heard: ‘Cannot you
Understand? This is another kind of
Slavery. God, the true God, sees all and will punish
Terribly. Turn away from your sin before it is
Too late.’ A cloud covered the thin moon,
And some, in slow fear, looked up. ‘A sign,’ she cried.
Then the cloud passed. ‘Cease your wickedness.
God will forgive, God will understand.’ But they
Dragged her down, stripping and beating her, lifting
The battered dull gold effigy to its old place,
Holding the terrified naked girl beneath
A jagged slab, while a gross lout as priest
Prayed gibberish to the calf – O guk O guk
Bondage of unintelligibubble. Gaaaaaar!
And he raised the knife and plunged, plunged
Till he was tired of plunging. Horror, awe,
Joy. He covered his arms and head with blood,
He daubed the loins of the calf in it, and now
The calf surged about, dripping in blood,
Anointing their own loins. They brought a boy,
Already stunned with a sharp rock, and rent him,
And some drank the blood and chewed and spat out
The rent flesh. (A drunk made slobbering love
To a woman equally drunk, and, equally drunk,
Another man wrestled with him in jealousy
And then took a stone and spilled his brains.
All brains and blood about them, he and she
Made slobbering love.) The dull gold effigy
Was everywhere daubed with blood and brains and seed
And, like red seed, blood dripped from its loins.
Battered and sobbing, Miriam crawled to her tent
And found Eliseba there, and the children, safe,
But where was Zipporah? The moon was setting.
The faintest dawn-streaked flushed. And high on Horeb
Moses emerged from the cloud, under his arms
Two tablets, intricately carved, grim, growing gentle
As he bade the sleeping Joshua awake.
Joshua looked up, saw the tablets, saw
A kind of white light about the head of Moses,
And, seeing, knelt. ‘Rise, Joshua,’ he was told.
‘We have mischief below. We must go down to the mischief.’
So they descended as dawn grew, till at length,
From a ridge above the encampment, they saw enough:
A beast of metal drunkenly on a plinth,
Daubed with dried blood, some of it flaking off,
A naked body, too mauled to show its sex,
Men and women sleeping naked, corpses,
Bloody everywhere, odd whimpering cries
From sources unseen, half-devoured whole sheep,
The flies already at their work, shattered wine jugs,
Blood. ‘Call’, said Moses quietly. ‘Call, Joshua.’
So Joshua put his hollowed hands to his cheeks
And called a long sound. He called and called.
Some stirred, then slept again, moaning. Some
Stirred and listened and wondered, dazed, then saw
Dried blood in the sun. Miriam heard,
Ceasing to sob, and Aaron, bruised, dry blood on him,
Heard. Many heard, looking in fear, wonder,
See
ing bones, spilt wine, soon, silent in the camp,
Two men walking. Zipporah, lying alone,
Blood on her garment, saw: light from his head,
His, shining, and behind his head an instant
The battered horns. He did not seem to see her,
Then Aaron stood before Moses, saying nothing,
Having nothing to say, then fell down in tears,
And Moses said, in sadness: ‘Not enough knowledge.
Never enough. And out of ignorance, evil.
The work wasted. All the work wasted.’
In his arms were the stones, painfully chiselled.
‘The covenant is broken. We must start again.’
And soon to an assembled nation, weeping and fearful:
‘The covenant is broken. We must start again.
You said you would accept the covenant.
But you had no faith, a frail and ignorant people.
And now the tablets of the law, so lovingly,
So painfully inscribed, must be smashed to dust.
For what was accepted in freedom was rejected in freedom.
Men are born free to do good and free to do ill.
You chose the latter way. You must suffer for that,
Suffer, since freedom always has its price.
You must suffer for that, in modes of suffering
That soon you will see, hear, smell, taste, feel in the
Very nerve and the very marrow. But first
We must perform the rite of the breaking of the covenant.
So be it.’ And he threw the stones to the earth.
Aaron and Koreh took stones and broke the stones,
Ground the stones to dust, sweating. The words
Were released to the sphere of the spirit, but the stone
Was dust. ‘We must start again,’ said Moses.
‘Once more I ascend the mountain, there to take
Once more counsel of the Lord our God, but first – ’
It was evening, and a great fire was being blown
To white heat. ‘What you worshipped,’ Moses cried,
‘Must be your bane. The thing you took unto yourselves
In the spirit you must now in chastisement take
Unto yourselves in the flesh. Not all, but some.
For you are all one people, and it suffices
That one limb, tooth, nerve, eyeball be enforced
To shriek out for the entire body to know
Pain. Pain. I have appointed officers
Of the tribe of Levi to see that mouths which cried
In obscene ecstasy shall now, in a diverse mode,
Cry out. Not all but some, the grosser sinners.
What you kissed you now must eat and drink.’
The calf on it plinth was dragged down by the Levites
Collected Poems Page 21
