And cast into the fire, there to dissolve
To a scalding broth. ‘This,’ he cried, ‘was your God.’
It was mingled with water and thrust down the sinners’ throats.
Nor was this all. The grosser sinners were stoned,
Hanged, pierced by arrows, hurled from the slopes
(But not Dathan, whose destiny lay otherwise,
Whose potency of grossness was, as it were,
Decreed as a thorn for Moses). The masons chose
New stone and shaped it for a new covenant.
And Moses, before he sought the peak of Horeb
Once more, Joshua with him, asked the people:
‘Will you remember that this is the Lord your God,
Who brought you out of Egyptian bondage? Will you
Promise to worship no other God but Him,
Nor to make images of things that are on the earth
Or in the sky or rivers or seas for profane
And sinful worship? Will you keep the Sabbath holy,
Preserve the holiness of the family, honour your parents,
Respect the sanctity of the bond of marriage? Do you
Promise never to steal, never to murder,
Never to lust after that what is another’s? Will you
Keep the covenant the covenant will you
Keep the covenant?’ Will will we will.
The valley rang with shamed affirmation.
Yes hurtled through the air as the last of the
Condemned hurtled from the slopes. So Moses and Joshua
Climbed Horeb for the second time, leaving below
A chastened nation burying its dead,
Burying much else. So time passed, with the covenant
Unbroken, the covenant the sacred body of the law
Inscribed not in the riddling signs of the priests
They had known in Egypt but in a new way, a way
Apt for a covenant, with signs for sounds of speech
That all might read if they would, but the sacred stones
Had to be housed in a sacred place. The craftsmen
Built an arc of wood, with beauty and cunning
Spent on it to the utmost, and here the covenant
Was tabernacled. Moses said Aaron:
‘It is in your keeping, Aaron. Aaron the priest.’ –
‘The priest,’ Aaron said. ‘How must I take that?
In a manner of a punishment?’ But Moses said:
‘A priest is God’s voice. Could any man wish
To be higher than God’s voice?’ – ‘Once,’ Aaron said,
‘I was your voice.’ – ‘And so,’ his brother replied,
‘Take this not in manner of a punishment but in
Manner of a promotion’. They looked at each other,
A curve unreadable on each other’s lips,
And Aaron said: ‘Well then – to my first office.’
And Moses: ‘God be with you, man of God.’
So Aaron was enrobed and he walked to the ark
And reverently shut the covenant within,
Improvising a ceremony: ‘Hereon is inscribed
God’s law. The very stone shall be accounted
Sacred. Behold our God is a just God.’
Stiff-jointed the people knelt. Then Moses knelt.
And Aaron the priest prayed: ‘God, who art a just God,
Be also, we beseech, a forgiving God.
For men are weak, being made but of earth’s clay,
Quick to transgress. If, Lord, we have sinned once,
Will we not sin again? If we were perfect,
Would we not have need of thee?’ Moses, kneeling,
Was thoughtful (weak – forgiving). After sunset,
Zipporah, his wife, preparing Ghersom, his son,
For sleep, heard Ghersom’s question once more:
‘Is he still very busy?’ – ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘busy.
He has the whole of Israel to look after.’ –
‘When’ asked Ghersom, ‘will he be with us again?’
But, before she could answer, a shadow stood between
His bed and the lamp of sheep-fat. Ghersom said:
‘You had better not stay too long, sir. Israel needs you.’
And Moses smiled and wept and took his wife
In trembling arms. ‘Who am I’, trembling, ‘to reproach,
Even to talk of sin or weakness? To forgive
If forgiveness is needed – enough. Forgive me too,’
As she sobbed in his arms. ‘We all have to start again.’ –
‘It was little enough’, she sobbed. ‘Wine in my head,
A pair of young arms in the dance. But it was too much.’ –
‘Learning is heard,’ he said. ‘We all have to learn.
Sobs, even laughter as Ghersom said once more:
‘Israel needs you. How long will you stay?’
But the time of staying under the mountain in the valley
Of Jethro was now to end. An order of march was worked out,
Moses drawing with his stave on the sandy earth,
Saying: ‘There in the midst the ark of the covenant,
With its own bodyguard drawn from the Levites. No enemy
Shall take it, no infidel defile it. It is our hub,
And, as twelve spokes, the fixed and changeless posts
Of the tribes,’ showing – Dan, Reuben, Benjamin…
‘A battle order,’ Joshua said. And Moses:
‘You may call it that.’ Then Caleb: ‘When do we march?’
And Moses pondered. ‘Miriam,’ he said to Aaron.
‘How is she?’ Aaron said: ‘Very sick. But ready.
Ready to go to the land.’ She will not see it,
Moses told himself. But it is better thus,
To die striving forward, in others’ hope.
‘So,’ he pronounced, ‘we move tomorrow at dawn.’
There was weeping at the well when they took their leave of Jethro
And his daughters, some now married, some not. Weeping
Of many over many graves, brethren buried,
Much else buried. Miriam, pale, wasted,
Lay in rugs on an ox-cart, Eliseba tending her.
Just before the raising of the staff as signal, incorrigible
Dathan rooted in the ashes of the punitive fire
And came up with a thumb-nail fragment of the gold, holding
That nothingness up to the sun; the sun swallowed it.
They took their last look of Horeb, its peak no longer
Enmisted: eagles circled there. Towards rock,
Desert, thirst, hunger, the law in their midst,
They moved.
12
DEATH AND THE LAW
At the next oasis Miriam’s end drew near.
Moses wiped her fever, in the coolness of a cave,
And Miriam shuddered painfully, hearing from without
That marriage song of the young: ‘It will happen again.
Again.”’But Moses soothed her, saying: ‘This
Is a different excitement: they already smell
The air of our promised land, or think they do.
The hope lies with the young. The old, alas,
Are more than ever set in the old ways.
They have learned fear but not yet understanding.
And you, my sister, how is it with you?’
She murmured: ‘I lose blood. I am weak. But feel
Little pain. I shall be glad to move on.
Move on. No more. Towards something even if we
Never reach it.’ – ‘We shall reach it,’ he said.
‘There’s a hunger to build – especially with the young.
To build, say, a temple and then a city
To hold the temple.’ She said: ‘I will not see it,
But it matters little enough. My w
ork, the work
I was ordained to do has been long done.
You were my work. My name perhaps will be known
For that. Girls given the name of Miriam.
It is something. I rescued a child from murderers.
And if I had not rescued that child – ’ He said:
‘You were ordained to. It was all laid down.
We are all in God’s pattern.’ But she, distressed:
‘Was that too part of God’s pattern? Is then evil
Part of God’s pattern?’ – ‘We must believe it,’ he said.
‘If evil is in man it must come from his maker.’
‘And it goes on’, she said. ‘It will go on.
Law will not quench it. I see much evil to come.
Law will not contain it. Nor will punishment.’ –
‘But men,’ he insisted, ‘learn from their own transgressions.
There will be no more building of golden calves.
Other things perhaps – man is ingenious.
He gets his ingenuity from God.’
And then she wept. ‘They had ceased to be men and women.
I could do nothing.’ Later her mind rambled
Or grew prophetic. ‘I heard the soldiers singing
Their dirty song. And God surely was there,
For if they had not been singing they would have heard,
Heard him crying. A new-born cry, very loud
In the night. But God made them sing their song,
Which was filthy and evil, and so they did not hear.
Little floating cradle. Meant to live,
He was meant to live. Girl girl, they said,
Who are you, girl, can you get him a wet nurse, girl?
And I did. Poor mother. But he lived, lived.
A pretty baby. They made him an Egyptian.’
(The moon showed Passover, the angel passing over.
‘Will he pass over tonight?’ the children asked,
Making sour faces over the bitter herbs,
The hard dry bread.) ‘They would not see it,’ said Miriam.
‘Many gods, like bits of pottery,
A housewife’s pride, but not the one true God.
So simple, and so many thousands of years
For it to come to the light. And still they will not
See it. And when they see it they will always say:
What good is it, what good? For the pains of life
Will not be easier. Truth makes nothing easier.
But truth must be sought.’ Eliseba, hiding tears,
Said: ‘Rest my dear, rest.’ But Miriam said:
‘Oh, there will be no rest. And when it is built,
The city, it will be knocked down, and the temple
Destroyed with the city. And it will go on and on.
They will wander and be made to wander further.
For there is no abiding city. Only the dark.
I must speak to my brother Moses.’ Moses said:
‘I am here, Miriam.’ She said: ‘You will not see it.
You will be forbidden to see it. It will take a
Long time to be made clean.’ Then they waited
For Miriam to say more, but she said no more.
Her eyes were open, but said no more. And Aaron
Closed her eyes, and then the wailing began.
The angel, it was shuddered about the camp.
Aaron said: ‘Let the soul of this thy servant
Go calmly to its haven, where is no pain,
Where the mill of the heart grinds no more
Of the bread of tribulation.’ Moses touched her face.
‘Rest, Miriam, rest.’ Then left and went
Into the dark to weep. So they buried her –
Another grave to mark their journey. Buried her,
With rites according to the law of Israel.
Nothing stayed, but there was always the law…
And Moses was administering the law one day
When Caleb appeared to speak of a monstrous serpent
Voided from a child’s body. ‘A bad omen.
That is the general feeling.’ But Moses said:
‘Let us hear nothing of omens. Let us hear rather
Of foolishness. What has the child been eating?’
So the story came out: some of the Israelites
Sick of their diet of mutton, traded a sheep
For a pig from a wandering tribe that herded pigs.
‘The pig,’ said Moses, ‘is not like other beasts.
It harbours worms in its gut and gives the worms
To those who eat it. Call it an act of revenge,
Though posthumous.’ Nobody smiled. Loudly he said:
‘Does it occur to no one that this serpent
Is a consequence of eating forbidden flesh –
Not a sign from heaven, but the passing on
Of a disease from beast to man? Can they not think?
Are they to be treated for ever like children?’ Caleb said:
‘There is no instruction about this. What is the law?
It seems not to be covered by the basic ten.’ –
‘More laws,’ said Moses. ‘No food from now on may be eaten
Without some act of supervision, God help us.
We need priestly intervention even there.
The body of the law must wax fat
Because the brain of the Israelite is small.
They cannot eat, God help us, without being
Told what to eat. Shall we put the spoon to their mouths?’
And, on another day, when Aaron was called
To see a sick child, its loins inflamed,
And its parents applying some filth of fat and spittle,
He saw that the child was uncircumcised. ‘Dust,’ he said,
‘Dirt has been trapped there.’ The father: ‘We did not think.’ –
‘You did not think,’ said Aaron. ‘And yet Zipporah,
Wife of our leader Moses, herself gave to God
As an offering the foreskin of her firstborn.
Was she not at that moment divinely inspired
To do what was for the child’s good? We are, above all,
A people of cleanliness. Remember that.
We are not disease-ridden rats of the wilderness.
Your son shall be circumcised.’ But the mother said:
‘I am not Zipporah. I could not take the knife
To my precious.’ Aaron sighed. ‘It shall be done for you.
So God be with you.’ And wearily he left.
But there was yet another day when Moses
Sat with his problems, in the cool of a cave,
And a tribal leader came with another problem,
A violation of the law of the Sabbath.
‘What were they doing?’ Moses wearily asked. –
‘Gathering palm fronds to feed a fire. It seemed
Harmless enough, but, knowing that the covenant
Is strict on the matter, knowing that you yourself – ’
‘Yes?’ said Moses. ‘ – Set great store by the
Punctilious observance, as you term it
Somewhat grandiloquently, is of the very
Essence of the law. It is to do with man’s duty,
Duty, not right, to abstain from labour
That the body may be at peace and the spirit
At one with God. With God. One day in seven –
Can we not spare that day to honour our God?’ –
‘This,’ said the tribal leader, ‘is generally
Recognised and accepted, but – after all,
The gathering of a few palm fronds’ – ‘Yes?’ said Moses.
‘Wel,’ said the leader, ‘we were somewhat unsure
Of an appropriate penalty. The men in question
Were, naturally, rebuked. But they did not seem to be
Truly repentant. And then what happened was – ’
‘Yes?’ sai
d Moses. – ‘What happened was that one of them
Was discovered later looking for dry sticks –
For tinder. The rebuke had been of no avail.’ –
‘So now?’ said Moses. – ‘Now I seek instruction.
As to the appropriate mode of punishment.’
Then Moses felt the wrestling within
And the curse of his leadership was sour in his mouth,
But, wearily, hopelessly, he said: ‘The holy rest
Of the Sabbath must not be defiled. Let the miscreants
Be stoned to death.’ The tribal leader did not
Think that he… ‘Forgive me, I do not think that I
Quite.’ And Moses: ‘My sentence was, I fancy,
Clearly enough articulated. Let the miscreants
Be stoned to death.’ The leader: ‘With respect and deference,
I do not think that my people could at all
Possibly accept such a harsh, a disproportionate –
Forgive me. Sir.’ And Moses stood and said:
‘Can you or your people think of
An alternative punishment? More rebukes? Torture?
Turn them into living martyrs? Imprisonment?
We are all imprisoned until we reach the land.
Best be bold and have done with it. The law is the law,
One, indivisible. To kill another man
Merits death. To kill the Lord’s day,
The living breathing peace that belongs to the Lord,
Can that be accounted a lesser crime? The Lord God
Is thus blasphemed against. Blasphemy,
A sneer, a gob of spit in the face of God.
Let them be stoned to death.’ He said no more,
Returning to his rock seat and his problems,
But the tribal leader was aghast. That very day
The penalty was exacted – a wall-eyed thief,
A thief whose hair shone gold in the sun, transfixed
With twisted ropes to tree trunks, the crowd around
Murmuring, and soon doing more than murmur
When the muscles of the executioners
Glistened in the sunlight. They took, in an easy rhythm,
Rock after rock from the pile and hurled,
Hurled. The one died quickly, faceless, but the other
Lasted till there was not much of the human about him,
And then his head dropped to his shoulder. Not murmurs,
But yells of anger before the cave of Moses,
And stones thrown. The armed guard held steady.
Justice not murder to hell with your commandments
Break your stones again murderer your laws are
Nothing but murder. Grim, he came out. The stones flew.
He bled from his brow. The guard hit back with staves.