Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SEMITIC INTERLUDE; A SONNET SEQUENCE, by MARTIN FEINSTEIN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SEMITIC INTERLUDE; A SONNET SEQUENCE, by                    
First Line: Pharaoh is mighty on his throne
Last Line: But hears the bright voice of the blinded bird.
Subject(s): Courts & Courtiers; Egypt; Jews; Moses; Royal Court Life; Royalty; Kings; Queens; Judaism


Pharaoh is mighty on his throne, but ease
And surfeit are at work upon their treason,
Padding the fat about his perfumed knees,
Feeding his mood with devilish unreason,
Pharaoh is mighty, but his teeth compel
To bite his nails, till raw and bloody things.
Behind his throne a bright bird like a bell
Swings in its cage, a blinded bird that sings:
Not of the sun that floods the earth with light,
Not of the riders with their helms of gold,
Not of the scented passion of the night,
But of a sorrow deep, and cold, and blind.
What has its grief to do with Egypt's king?
And what has Pharaoh with its sorrowing?

"Moses!" "My lord?" "This bird of misery
Is sum of all my festering despair.
I have two eyes, why should their impulse be
Ravished by visions of the empty air?
And my two ears, why should all sound appall,
Like terror beating on her bellied drums?
I gape at sweetness, and it turns to gall,
And love is but a hag with mumbling gums.
I am alone, I am alone with sorrow,
I am alone with darkness on a throne,
Out of my mother's womb I came to borrow
Grief for a toy: I am alone, alone!"
Then when the blinded bird began to sing,
Moses gave subtle counsel to the king:

"The riders of the desert ride again,
From death to life, from life to death they go,
They make the rounds of all the lands of pain,
Lithe with a hunger that no gods can know.
There is no pity in the night for them,
And day withdraws at sound of their desire
Champing the sands, no stars are bright for them,
Only the beacon of a desert fire,
Lapping against their faces as they ride,
Wrapping a veil of red and porphyry.
Who will be first to enter, as a bride
Uncovers for the eyes of death to see?
The riders in the desert ride again,
They make the rounds of all the lands of pain."

"You walk in the wind with words," god Pharaoh said,
"Making myself and sundry overlap.
Am I a carcass cloven in the head,
Caught in the horrid dropping of a trap,
Twixt laughter and remorse? Why, that would be
Twin-evil to the dancing jade of mine
That hovered in a circle dizzily,
And sipped the black death from this cup of wine.
She was a Hebrew heretic, and I saw
Upon her lips such pardonable surmise,
Pierced like a crow after a single caw,
I was afraid to look into her eyes.
Wherever again the desert riders ride,
Through all the lands of pain she rides beside."

"A bare, brief time between the wind and sand
Abides for all, to bend and grope about.
O satiated Pharaoh, understand
A whisper means as much as any shout.
The girth of lust is measured by decay,
And maggots are the final chroniclers
Of kings and commons. There is none to say:
This is important. Mark, scribe, what occurs.'
A hound can run against the setting sun,
And bark his challenge to the passing stranger,
And dark, dark, dark is the course for one
Whose vision is fever and who runs in danger.
Console you with a jest, the jest will prove
A Hebrew, and your maid, and your dead love.

Grimace is but the dregs of bobbery,
Left of the full and blooded cup of wine,
Caprice is kin of snarling snobbery,
Taking to bed a phantom concubine,
Folly is mongrel of a half-intent,
Bred in the shadows, of a crabbed sire.
The shepherd moves without bewilderment,
But Pharaoh's way's to blunder and to tire.
O count your flocks, my lord, there may be one,
Of all those bleating throats and timid eyes,
Will run a truant though he is undone,
And bleats his blood out to indifferent skies.
And what a sheep can do, my lord, a man
Has heart to do, since dynasties began."

Pharoah's eyeballs grope against the light:
"What have I to do with sanctitude?
I need but let these bitches run their flight,
And they'll make tender sorting of their food,
Of sheep or man. Moses, be mollified,
I am no scurvy priest to be sustained
By sandy virtues. All my loves have died,
And yet I look for love, but love is feigned.
Dead ashes keep the ghost of ancient flame,
Desire is taught to run, and beg, and fetch.
I should be lessoned in this futile game,
I who have hunger for a privy wretch."
Despair gnawed fiercely at his fingertips,
And hunger crawled about the royal lips.

"Improve the pride, and make articulate
The lackey service of my maundering tongue,
Make firm the course of my unsteady fate,
And leave no drunken parle of mine unsung.
The sacred ibis struts along the Nile,
Proud of his black and white against the sky,
And stops, and blinks, and gobbles down the while
Reluctant frogs that glump and question: 'Why?
Why must we be fed to holiness?
We are too humble for such royal maws,
Would it not be better to impress
His highness with the need of better laws?'
Ah, but the fools must know there is no ruth,
Bellies must be filled: what else is truth?

"What else is truth but what a sword defends
Against the rabble and its evil moods?
What else is wise but when a word pretends
And spreads a holy veil about my goods?
What else is torment but a sultry laugh
Out of the twisted throat of poverty?
And these grim fools of mine have learned but half
Of what the proper cackle ought to be.
To set them grinning under a living lash,
Burn fire in them and see the oxen smile,
To lavish promises and to abash
The scurvy wretches that befoul the Nile,
To make a fury of each night and day,
O Moses, what a game for kings to play!"

"O Pharaoh of the cribbed and plundered mind,
You sit in isolation, and afraid,
Evil sits with you in an evil wind,
There is no ease for you, O self-betrayed.
Look down, and see where rumor laughs at you,
Brewing a storm of stubborn ridicule,
Your hands are slack, your lovers now are few,
Your high commands are emptiness and drool.
Here where the seat of justice might have been,
Fragrant, and honest in the sight of men,
Grow monstrous weeds, intolerance and sin,
And honor revels in a swinish pen.
And see, my lord, what your mistouch has done:
What is there lovely now beneath the sun?

"Lean down and look across the waste of years,
Whether, of all the glamor they enclose,
The heart of them is villainous with tears,
The breath of them is noxious to the nose,
Avid of nothing but of rue and bane,
Then tell me where is royalty among
The royal stalls where royal heads have lain,
The dregs, the ruins, and the crusted dung?
For these, my lord, were habitable places,
Where dainty palates fed and feet were fleet,
Out of the path of all those festive faces,
Should not the smell, my lord, be now more sweet?
The land is overburdened, men's hearts are raw,
More ruth, more ruth, my lord, and less of law!

"Now are the days and nights astir, men ask:
Whether, for all the stone their blood has bound,
Through all their shackled and unlovely task,
Has aught of judgment or of ruth been found?
There is a fire pressing on their sleep,
There is a song born of a slave's black sweat,
There is a dawning, and a sudden leap
Out of the darkness: they will not forget.
For lords and kingdoms will go down in dust,
Ant-hills under the feet of marching hosts,
And swords will yield to the devouring rust,
And night will clamor with unshriven ghosts,
And all of Pharaoh's frantic luxury
A wisp in the wind, my lord, foam of the sea.

"Far in the caverns and the desert places
There is a gathering, and the cries of men,
There is a lightning out of darkened faces,
There is a crackling shout: 'When, Lord, when?'
Who is this Pharaoh of the little eyes?
Who is this king that stands against our going?
Who is this mouther of the mighty lies?
This keeper of the truth against our knowing?
Bow down, bow down before him, paramours,
Bow down before him in your lustful band,
And try upon him all your amorous cures,
And kiss the royal lips and palsied hand,
For here is greatness tumbling to the earth,
And ruth is born, born of a slave's dark birth.

"O the dead soul of you that wills to live,
Buried and savage for the world it left,
No hands to fan you, no one there to give
Ear to your whispered passion: 'I am bereft!'
Crawl about and try the door of reason,
Press against the darkness of your cave,
All things open in their proper season,
Lift the gates that root upon your grave.
Cool rain is running down on earth again,
Sluicing, and pleasant as a stolen kiss,
Open your heart, open your desert pain,
There is no wonder, my lord, as great as this,
Tear the band of blindness from your eyes."
But Pharaoh moaned, and shook his head grief-wise.

Pharaoh's tongue is dry as dust of death,
And laps the gums for meagre sustenance,
There's flame upon his face, fire in his breath,
And in his heart there burns an evil chance.
Pharaoh is stark against his cushioned throne,
Pinned like a beetle, but his eyes are sharp,
And roll within the compass of the bone,
And hears the thrum-thrum-thruming of a harp,
And psaltery, and presently a-horning,
And thinks of demons and of Apepe,
Marshal of the hosts against the morning,
But day is god and crowds his enemy
Clanking to chaos; then harp and horn's unheard,
But hears the bright voice of the blinded bird.





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