Down all our throats, a canker of the cursed.
That bitch, that bastard. God, I gape aghast as
I contemplate the greed that could have cast us
Into the outer darkness – fed us, rather,
To final fire. But our ingenious master's
As quick to cancel as to cause disasters,
And to this end kindly became a father.
The sceptic beats his brain till dawn's first dapple
Lights him and all his books to slumber's amity.
Though he's read all from Moses to Mohamet, he
Rejects the truth of temple, mosque and chapeclass="underline"
That man brought sin and death and hell to grapple
His soul in irons, condemning God to damn it. He
Set up an aboriginal calamity
Or, if you like, munched a forbidden apple.
Why why why? One song, too many singers.
Why why? Why won't unwrite the bloody book.
So let them write a new one if they must.
Why why? We want an answer. They can look
In Milo Aphrodite's clutching fingers
Or up the arsehole of Pasquino's bust.
Knowledge
Before they yielded to the devil's urging
And crunched the good-bad apple to the core,
Bare innocence was all our parents wore,
Like Jesus Christ got ready for the scourging.
After their second gorge they felt emerging
A thing called shame. So rapidly they tore
Leaves from the trees to cover what before
Had been mere taps for secondary purging.
Thus good and evil, as we must conclude,
Succeed in making rude and crude and lewd
The dumpendebat and the fhairy grot.
Else why should man and missis play the prude?
Each knew, however leafily endued,
Precisely what the other one had got.
There'd be, if Adam hadn't sold our stock,
Preferring disobedience to riches,
No sin or death for us poor sons of bitches.
Man would range free, powerless to shame or shock,
And introduce all women to his cock,
Without the obstacles of skirt and breeches,
Spreading his seed immeasurably, which is
To say: all round the world, all round the clock.
The beasts would share the happy lot of men,
Despite a natural plenitude of flies.
There'd be no threats of Doomsday coming when
Christ must conduct the dreadful last assize.
Instead, the Lord would look in now and then,
Checking our needs, renewing our supplies.
A Problem
I'm puzzled. (Bear with me. Father Superior.)
If Adam's gorging had not been the means
Of turning us to compost for the beans
– Nothing more useful, yes, but nothing drearier -
And all who issue from their dam's interior
Did not end up by pushing up the greens,
Now what would be finale to those scenes
Which start with bouts of murderous hysteria?
Ah but (you say) along with immortality
There'd be no urge to sin: remember this.
Thank you. And so – predestinate causality
And no free will (but Adam had it: yes?).
What puzzles me is: would I incur fatality
If I fell down a fucking precipice?
We sinners have to eat four times a day
Or, if we happen to be English, five.
But man unfallen would have stayed alive.
If not a single crumb had come his way.
And even if they'd served him on a tray
Boiled stones, mashed mud, garnished with poison iv-
Y, he'd survive – indeed, contrive
To thrive on shit like any flower of May.
Everyone thin, carting an empty belly
About, knowing no gustatory bliss
In wine or trout or grouse in aspic jelly;
With jam a joke and fowl farci a farce.
The tongue and teeth for talk, yes; but why this
Hole, O ye holy buggers, up the arse?
Cain 1
"Cain, where is Abel?" Silence. "Cain, Cain, where
Is Abel?" Silence. "Cain!" Then came Cain's cry:
"Shoving your nose in. How the fuck should I
Know where he is? Or, for that matter, care?
Am I my brother's keeper?" The high air
Darkened at this, shuddered at God's reply:
"I'll tell you where, you killer – done in by
Your knife, he's pushing up those parsnips there.
Out of my sight, start running, up and down
The whole damned earth, you damned, you cursed, and cry
Through every bloody street of every town.
Howl, you unchristian swine, your dismal tune
Hurl at the stars, then shiver in the sky,
Weep till you brim the pockholes of the moon."
Please don't think, Herr Professor, I intend
Defending Cain. Better than you, perhaps,
I know him, but know too the sort of lapse
Drink will induce – how it can blind and bend
And break. See Cain drunk, beckoning like a friend,
Thick stick in fist, an oiled smile on his chaps,
Wooing his brother hither. Then he taps,
Raps bone, draws blood, the swine, and makes an end.
Filthy? Oh, yes. Still, it was far from funny
Having to hear God hawking up his phlegm
To spit upon his parsnips and his honey
But not on Abel's sheep, no, not on them.
Born of the breed of men and not of mice,
Cain growled revolt then cut himself a slice.
Cain 3
Reproach him not for bidding crime begin.
Evil was what he sucked in from his mother.
The murder of his innocent young brother
Derived from something deep beneath the skin.
As two and two make four, so man makes sin.
Still, there's a nagging problem tough to smother:
How did he know when one man cracks another
With force enough he does that other in?
Think now. Before Cain played the bloody brute
No one had demonstrated death as yet.
This doctrine, then, is murderous to refute:
That murder is an impulse man first met
When his teeth met inside that juicy fruit.
What's homicide? A thing your father ate.
God said to Noah: "Listen, er patriarch.
You and your sons, each take his little hatchet,
Lop wood enough to build yourselves an ark
To these specifications. Roof and thatch it
Like Porto de Ripetta ferry. Mark
Me well now. Chase each make of beast and catch it.
And catch a male or female that will match it.
Then with your victuals, zoo and wives, embark.
A flood is going to test your wooden walls,
A world's end deluge. Tivoli waterfalls
Will seem an arc of piss in a urinal.
Ride it until you sight a rainbow. Then
Jump in the mud and make things grow again
Till the next world's end. (That one will be final.)"
The Ark 2
Elephants, fleas, cows, lions, sheep, wolves, hares,
Foxes and flies, roosters and stags and stallions,
Mice by platoons and rabbits by battalions,
Donkeys and pigs and bugs, monkeys and mares.
Meat by the ton, cheese, pasta, worms, figs, pears,
Maize, clover, hay, whey, pigswill, skilly, scallions,
Bones, birdseed, bran, melons like golden galleons,
Minced heart for owls and honey for the bears:
These and much more poor Noah stowed in the boat
That God made airtight, cosy, close and dark.
A year and more this barnyard was afloat,
Heady with gorgonzola, goat and skunk.
How did he cope, our blessed patriarch?
Ask him. He may respond by getting drunk.