Set birds high, beasts low, fishes lower still,
Planted their plants, then yawned: "Aye, that'll do."
No, wait. The old man baked two bits of bread
Called Folk – I quite forgot to mention it -
So he could shout: "Don't bite that round ripe red
Pie-filling there." Of course, the buggers bit.
Though mad at them, he turned on us instead
And said: "Posterity, you're in the shit."
The Beastly Paradise
Animals led a sort of landlord's life
And did not give a fuck for anyone
Till man fucked up their social union
With gun and trap and farm and butcher's knife.
Freedom was frolic, roughish fun was rife,
And as for talk, they just went on and on,
Yakking as good as any dean or don,
While Adam stood there dumb, with a dumb wife.
This was the boss who came to teach them what
Was what, with harness, hatchet, stick and shot,
Bashing them to red gravy, thick and hot.
He stole their speech too, making sure he'd got
Dumb servitude – the plough; if not, the pot.
He had the last word. Nay, he had the lot.
Man the Tyrant
This furred and feathered boss of bird and brute
Assumed the god, all bloody airs and graces,
Nor deigned to look down in his subjects' faces,
Treating each creature like a mildewed boot.
He swilled, he gorged, but his preferred pursuit
Mixed sticking pigs and whipping hounds on chases,
Marches through arches, blown brass and tossed maces,
With decking Eve, that bitch, in hunter's loot.
The beasts had hunted looks, being forced to make,
Poor wretches, the bad best of a bad job
And put up with that swine – all save the snake
Who, spitting like a kettle on a hob,
Weaved at the foul shapes tyranny can take
And hissed: "I'll get you yet, you fucking snob."
Origins
A sort of interlude. Let's look at dogs.
At mastiff, Great Dane, greyhound, poodle, beagle,
The sausage hound, that yelps like a sick seagull,
Asthmatic bullpups honking hard as hogs.
Now men. Irish in bogs and Dutch in clogs,
Swarthy as turds, sharp-conked as any eagle,
The Jew and Turk. Then, trying to look regal,
Tea-slurping English, and French eating frogs.
Compare some doggy that leaps on to laps
With a prize wolfhound. Different as cheese and chalk.
In spite of this, our parish ballocks yaps
About us springing from a single stalk:
One primal bitch for pups, and one for chaps.
Did you ever hear such stupid fucking talk?
Adam
If God made man, we've no call to regret
Man's love of blood and lack of bloody sense.
God, who's all what they call omnipotence,
Meaning he'll piss the bed and prove it's sweat,
Pissed on some clay and sweated cobs to get
A statue from it, sparing no expense.
Then he took breath and blew – Haaaa Hadam.
Hence Man's sometimes called the Puffed Up Marionette.
In just one minute he could spout out history
And write and read great tomes as tough as Plato's.
He knew it all when first he tottered bedwards.
The names of beasts and birds – no bloody mystery.
Like a greengrocer sorting out potatoes:
"This lot is whiteboys and these here King Edwards."
Image amp; Likeness
Now, Brother Trustgod, Godtrust (never knew
God had a rupture. Sorry), please let me
Shove in a word. I just won't have it, see.
God made us all in his own image, did he? You
Are mad. If Paul himself, yes Saint Paul, flew
Down to agree with you, I'd tell him he
Was mad. (He was mad.) Why don't you decree
Old Nick was made in God's own image too?
O bleeding Christ and Christ's own bleeding mother,
Even if the sanctified three-hatted sod
Says what you say, it's still, my half-arsed brother,
Mad. Is God's image in greengrocer's shops
Then, in greengrocers? God, he must be a God
About Eve
Give me a woman bare as a boiled egg,
Who'd think a brush and comb came from the divvle,
Who owns no snotrag to entrap her snivel,
Or towel or dishcloth hanging from a peg,
Who has no shoe on foot or hose on leg
Nor any of the Amenities of Civil-
Ised Life, to use the advertiser's drivel.
No jakes to thrutch in and no pot to deg,
Who will sup water but not sit in it
Nor on a chair nor underneath a roof,
Who'll never see the muckman do his duty.
Picture this little lady decked in shit
From hair to heel, then try to give me proof
That Mother Eve, Christ help us, was a beauty.
Another Point of View
But some say: Scorn her not. Remember, she,
When Adam took her, did not turn her face
But drank the dreadful fire of his embrace.
Dirty or not, without her where would we
Be? She merits homage. So, with me:
"O ave Eva, though full of disgrace,
We love thee as the root of all our race;
Thy sap runs in us, leaves of thy living tree."
Dirty? How do we know? Perhaps her skin
Was laved in a miraculous hygiene,
Just as the second Eve was laved within.
Not that it matters. For myself, I lean
To lauding both her sordor and her sin.
Without those to wash off, who could be clean?
Greed
Which of the seven deadly sins is worst?
Pride sneering skyward, avarice shrieking
More, Liplicking lust, or anger, one red roar?
No, gluttony, the fifth sin, is the first.
From Adam burst a famine and a thirst
For a wormy apple offered by a whore,
A penny pippin. God has rammed its core
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.
Original Sin
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 chapel:
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.
What Might Have Been
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?
Holy Starvation
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."
Cain 2
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.
The Ark 1
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.
Noah on Land
Drunk, yes. Near his palazzo, safe on shore,
Noah planted vines and fondly watched them sprout,
And when he saw the luscious grapes fill out
(One bunch weighed ten or twenty pounds, or more),
He crushed the juice in ferment, let it pour
Down the red lane, and gave a toper's shout:
"It's good, it's fucking good!" His drunken bout
First made him high and, after, hit the floor.
That was strong stuff, he was not used to it.
Like all us drunkards, snoring at the sun,
He lay as flat as a five-lira bit.
But – shame – our patriarch had no breeches on
And – but I'd better quote you Holy Writ -.
"Displayed his balls and prick to everyone."
Age
If it is true, as the priests say it is,
That every ancient patriarch and prophet
Took a long time for old age to kill off (it
Was, in some cases, nine damned centuries),
They must have been damned short of maladies -
No stone, hard chancre, or bronchitic cough. It
Could be they postponed their trip to Tophet
With secrets still unsold in pharmacies.
Such agelessness would wreck our modern age.
That lad, see, fifty years in his high chair,
A hundred more at school, would choke with rage
(Himself a dad now, in or out of matrimony)
Waiting for dad to die and bless his heir,
Trying to run up bills against his patrimony.
The Tower
"We'd like to touch the stars," they cried, and, after,
"We've got to touch the stars. But how?" An able-
Brained bastard told them: "Build the Tower of Babel.
Start now, get moving. Dig holes, sink a shaft. A-
Rise, arouse, raise rafter after rafter,
Get bricks, sand, limestone, scaffolding and cable.
I'm clerk of works, fetch me a chair and table."
God meanwhile well-nigh pissed himself with laughter.
They'd just got level with the Pope's top floor
When something in their mouths began to give:
They couldn't talk Italian any more.
The project died in this linguistic slaughter.
Thus, if a man said: "Pass us that there sieve,"
His mate would hand him up a pail of water.
Lot 1
Two strangers, both with staffs, but one a bit