Till the end of our race. And the lamb we kill,
Each of our households, the lamb we eat
Is an offering to the Lord, who leads us
In our passing over from death to life.’ But of that other
Passing over he did not for the moment speak,
Learning fast the beneficent wiles of the leader.
So Aaron said: ‘On the lintels of your dwellings
And on the doorposts, you shall daub some of the
Lamb’s blood, as a sign.’ As a sign of what?
So the bolder asked, and Aaron said: ‘As a sign
Of the primal sacrifice, wherein we kill,
And of the second sacrifice, wherein we eat,
Marking the place where ‘we eat’’ [beneficent wiles].
The daubing was done and inspected, and, on the fires,
The tender flesh seethed, while in the ovens
The heard heavy bread was baked. So at nightfall
All were ready to sit, girded, sandalled,
The children excited, and there was laughter,
Even song, for the time was coming. ‘The time is coming,’
They said, but not really believing,
For this was a ceremony only of deliverance.
But in Aaron’s house where all the blood of Amram
Sat, fingering bitter herbs, ‘The time is coming’,
Moses said, and shuddered. ‘This is Passover,
And will be so till the end of our race, to mark
The hour of his passing over.’ Shuddering. ‘But it is a
Terrible thing, a terrible burden, and the
Burden is just beginning.’ He put his head in his hands,
But Miriam held his shoulders, saying: ‘Courage.
Courage.’ Then all suddenly listened.
But there was nothing to hear. ‘The silence,’ Aaron said,
‘Strikes like a new noise.’ Then Moses heard.
‘He is coming. God help them. He is coming. Now.’
Then, from afar, a scream, and another,
And soon the sound of wailing. They sat silent,
The meat grown cold on the table, listening.
Then the noise of a nearing wind at the door,
And the door shaking, but then the shaking ceased,
And the wind passed over.
In the imperial palace
They heard the wailing without, even Pharaoh heard,
And his queen, in the innermost chamber, listened dumbly.
The infant prince slept in his cradle, placed in the heart
Of a magical pentacle, and the chief magician,
His assistants all about him, intoned, intoned:
‘For the safety of the house and all within it.
May the first nameless, who guards the doors of the eyes,
Be doubly watchful. May the second nameless,
Who sits in the doorways of the ears, be this night aware
Of the rustling and breathing of the malign intruder.
May the third nameless, who lives suspended in the
Air of the nostrils, smell out the evil of him
Who approaches with the intent of evil…’ A little cry
From the cradle, and the king froze, and the queen,
But they bent over and Pharaoh said: ‘He is dreaming.
It is a good dream – see, he smiles in his sleep.
My precious. See, he holds out his little arms.’
And he lifted the child from his cradle and held him, crooning,
Like any father, then said: ‘No harm, no harm,
No harm shall come to him, for he is my precious.’
A sudden scream from afar stopped the magician’s chant
An instant, but he continued: ‘And the nameless one
Who sits in the cup of the navel…’ Pharaoh said:
‘Be quiet. What was that?’ And a minister, soothing:
‘A servant, majesty. The child of a servant.’
Pharaoh whispered: ‘Nothing shall. Nothing.
Stand round us with your torches. Burn your incense.
Say your prayer. Say it.’ So the magician intoned:
‘Gods of the seven worlds, hear, hearken.
Let the word of your servant be sweet in the ear
Of the guardians of the living. Let no evil
Touch your servant this night, let the dark be
Beneficent, and the vapours of the night
Be like the balm of the morning. Let the souls
Of the evil dead lie in sleep, unenticed
By the smell of smoke that puts out the light
Till the morning comes again, and the world is living
And the sun blesses and there is nothing more to fear.’
Pharaoh looked down on his child, cradled in his arms,
Incredulously towards his queen and all looked and
None was in any doubt as a bank of candles
Flickered as in the draught of a great wind,
And from Pharaoh went up the cry of an animal,
Filling the chamber, the palace, spilling into the night,
Spilling into one pair of ears in Pithom, those
That had listened to fieldmice chatter and bats at nightfall.
The palace took up the cry and gongs and drums
Turned it to a geometry of lamentation,
While, like a thing of wood or metal, the king
Carried the child blindly, the mother following,
Choked in pain the gongs muffled, till they stood
Before a god of metal and Pharaoh whispered:
‘What do I do now? Beg you to comfort him
On his passage through the tunnels of the night?
Beseech you to remember that he is still
Of your divine flesh, and to restore him to the light
Where he is – needed? Or do I see you already
As very hollow, very weak, impotent, a sham?
Am I born too early or too late? Does heaven
Remake itself? Has the dominion passed over
To that single God who was neither sun nor moon
But the light of both? But in your eyes there is nothing.
Your head is the head of a bird.’
The mother took the tiny body, weeping under the gongs,
And Pharaoh turned his back on the god, looking towards
Goshen, Moses, saying, ‘Did you hear my cry?
And the cries of the other fathers of Egypt, mothers
Of Egypt? Go, then. Take your women and your
Unscathed children. Take your cattle and sheep
And your wretched possessions. Leave my people in peace.
Go, serve your God in what manner you will.
And come no more into Egypt.’ And said again:
Rise up and go forth among my people,
Both you and the people of Israel, and go,
Serve the Lord, as you have said.
Take your flocks and your herds and bless your freedom
Be gone. And bless me also. Me also.
7
THE EXODUS
Before dawn, with a foredawn wind blowing,
With the blowing of ram’s horns, answering
From tribe to tribe, under the moon and stars,
They got themselves ready, hardly able to believe it,
Many sad at leaving the evil known for the unknown good,
Especially as the hovels emptied of chattels,
The meagre good were roped to carts, and
Home, such as it was, dissolved with the
Fading of the stars. There were tears enough
As the cocks crew, answering from
Village to village. The cows were milked in haste
And, lowing, herded for the journey. A choral bleat
Of sheep drowned the horn and the cock-crow. Oxen
Were harnessed. While Aaron marshalled the tribal leader
s
And then the leaders marshalled the tribes,
Moses walked among them all, cutting off thought,
For thought was mostly doubt of himself, seeing
The women with child, the children, the champing old
Lifted on to ox-carts. The stars were gone,
The east promised another day of fire,
The desert beckoned. Miriam released her doves
And her doves flew eastward, into the light
That was not yet cruel light. Dathan was a flame
About the cart whereon the treasury was loaded,
Gold, jewels, all Egyptian bribes. Then Moses spoke
To the God within him, saying: ‘Be with me, be
With me,’ raising his staff, setting his face
With smarting eyes to the east, and so it began,
The ragged exodus, with none to oppose them,
Through the delta land, through scrub, then to the desert,
Already, as the sun warmed, the lineaments
Of fatigue, despair, the promise of rebellion
Among some who, tasting that word freedom,
Were ready enough to spit it out of a dry mouth,
Longing sickly for the slave’s day, the known evil.
So Pithom was empty. In the empty house of Aaron
A lone dog crunched the paschal bone. In the
Empty heart of Pharaoh bitterness
Found a house, then the house grew to a palace,
Then massive portals of the palace heaved to opening,
After the funeral, one of many, the priests
Giving unctuous comfort, saying: ‘It will pass
As a bad dream passes. For the pestilence is gone,
The rivers flow silver not red, the air is
Filled with the song of birds not the buzz of gnats
And the fretful cry of locusts. The land, you will see,
Will be fruitful again, your loins, you will see,
Will be fruitful.’ But the bereaved wept.
‘The evil,’ spoke the priests, ‘that visited our land
Was an emanation of an evil people.
But the Israelites are no longer with us: the gods
Gave us a sign to drive them out of our midst.
And lo they are gone…’ At Pithom, in the empty mudpits,
A scribe drank palm-wine with an overseer of workers,
His occupation, for the moment, gone. ‘Quiet,’ said the scribe.
‘The silence is a sort of memory of their noise.’
‘Not quiet in the other mudpits,’ the overseer said.
‘He should never have done it. Now all the slaves –
Greeks, Berbers, the rest – want to go to the desert,
To do sacrifice to what they call their gods.
Of course, it could all be a coincidence –
The plague, the flies, the locusts. But the
Blood was real, though. Red, thick,
As any in a slaughterhouse. All against nature.
It was as if nature went wrong for a time.
And these – ’ He gestured towards the huge absence.
‘These took advantage. They cause it, no.
They pretended to cause it. Cunning.’ The scribe said:
‘This too is against nature. This not having slaves.
How does one build a city without slaves?
A civilisation – do you know that word? – without slaves
Is totally against reason, meaning nature.
You have to have slaves.’ So they drank palm-wine
To protect themselves from the evil emptiness.
In that other emptiness, nearly a day’s march done,
The emptiness began to fill with the
First of the new signs: a dust-cloud swirling
And many fearful and talking of being lost,
We’re lost already, and look at this evil dust
Enveloping us, I said we should never have left,
At least we were safe there. The words of Moses
Relayed through leaders to tribe after tribe:
‘You say we are lost. But we are not lost.
You see this cloud of dust. It is God’s sign
That he is with us. See how the wind
Drives the cloud before us. God works through
Everything. Even a cloud of dust. God works
Through the smoke and rain. And dust of the desert.
God works through this pillar of cloud. See –
How it moves ahead of us. It bids us follow.’
Follow, some said, follow where? The answer was ready
On the lips of the leaders: ‘The promised land.
Where else.’ We shan’t see much of it.
Not with the dust in the way. And then there’s night.
What do we follow at night? ‘The Lord,’ said Moses,
‘Will think of something.’ And, indeed, at nightfall
A blinding company of fireflies, was it fireflies?,
Flashed into view. Fireflies? Glowworms? ‘Let’s follow,’
Moses said. A pillar of fire, moving ahead of them.
They followed, marvelling some, some grumbling.
How did they know it was not Egyptian magic,
Leading them back to slavery? Ah, slavery, some said.
The word is worse than the thing. But they followed.
And, in the council-chamber, the Lord Pharaoh
Followed his ministers’ words distractedly,
His ears still filled with the sobbing of his queen
And his own sobbing. ‘The shock of the people, majesty,
Has been, naturally, profound. It is manifested,
So to speak, in a slow numbing
Illness of doubt. Such doubt has not
Previously been known.’ And ‘The whole concept of the
Monarchy is inevitably in jeopardy,
Since there seems, in the eyes of the commonalty,
To have been a withdrawal of divine power.’ And Pharaoh:
‘What reports from the worksites, my lords?’ They answered:
‘Majesty, the recent riots have been contained.
There has been what is termed in this message here
A slackening of fibre, the sense of a
Silent but massive insolence in the face of the
Threat of…’ And Pharaoh: ‘Yes yes yes, and of course
The great evil is already a great dream.
Except among the bereaved.’ So one said:
‘Wounds heal, majesty. A truism, but true.’ Pharaoh answered:
‘Anger does not heal. Hatred. But then of course
Comes doubt – doubt as to the validity
Of the whole ancient system. New modes of justice.
New gods. Can there be new gods?’ The chief magician:
‘The gods, as I have said, majesty, subsist
Outside time. Only in time is change possible.
There are no new gods. You may, majesty, take that
As an irrefutable fact.’ Then a minister:
‘History, as our records show, is full of the
Inexplicable. The sudden famine, the muddying of the Nile,
Plagues, storms – Nature is wayward, self-willed.
But this has nothing at all to do with the gods.’
Pharaoh said: ‘Vague theology, half-chewed theory.
What is to be done? What practical measures
Offer themselves? There shoring up of a whipped monarchy
With the gods yawning…’ The chief magician said:
‘With respect, your divine majesty, such cynicism
Is in itself a corroborative of the already increasing
Popular lack of confidence in the…’ A minister
Spoke firmly: ‘The following narrative is no lie.
The Pharaoh, out of his divine benevolence,
Granted the request of the Israelite work-force
That they be permitted to do sacrifice
To their god in the desert. The period of leave requested
Was three days.’ Pharaoh saw. ‘How many days
Have they now been out of Egypt? Five, is it not?’
Five, five. ‘So’, Pharaoh pronounced.
‘We bring them back. Nothing could be simpler.’
Nothing simpler. Smiles, but he did not smile.
At the end of the fifth day in the desert, Aaron spoke,
Dissatisfied, to Moses, looking ahead,
Pharaoh and Pithom already far in the past:
‘The mistake, I say, lies in the organisation.
Old men, hereditary leaders of tribes and clans –
What true leadership can you expect from them?
They will be good enough at sitting in tents, cross-legged,
Giving judgments on marriage and property. But for a
Desert march…’ Moses looked back at Pithom,
Into the sunset, faintly troubled at something
He must wait for time to define, and said: ‘I know.
But this is no time to reorganise.’ Aaron cried:
‘We cannot survive if we do not. Already
Water discipline is bad. Food is stolen,
Selfishly hoarded. We need police, weapons,
A disciplinary court.’ Moses said: ‘The time is not yet.
We are not yet out of Egypt.’ Joshua spoke:
‘We’re a five days’ march out of Pithom. As for Egypt,
It belongs to our past, a past to be wiped out.
We are already living in the future.
Perhaps Aaron is too old to feel the flame of the future.
We organise in a new way – from within.
Not the Egyptian way. He talks of police,
Of disciplinary courts. That won’t be our way.’ –
‘There is only one way’, said Aaron hotly. But Moses:
‘Not yet. I say again not yet. Nor is the past
To be wiped out. If all others forget,
If even Egypt forgets, we have to remember.
He brought us out of Egypt. Write that in your hearts.’
Then Miriam spoke: ‘Many of our women, I fear,
Still have their hearts in Egypt. All they remember
Is gossip around the fountain at nightfall,
The daily baking of bread. They whine for it –
The bread of Egypt.’ Joshua said: ‘Even the young,
A few of them, talking about going back. To the
Only life they knew – whips and tyranny
As part of the order of nature. But I dealt with them.’
Moses smiled, asked how. ‘Talked with them,
I and some of the other progressives.’ Moses said:
‘A good word, progressive. Progress means
Going forward. No matter to what. Just forward.