Anthony Burgess - ABBA ABBA

A woman's nature's nature-in-the-spring.

To get to know it, cease your pondering,

Slap on your chest two puddings in a sling

And let your haunches launch into a swing.

Belshazzar, drunk, observed a kind of smoke

Resolve itself to something vaguely manual

Writing upon the wall. He called on Daniel.

"Many tickle your arse - What's this – a joke?"

The ambiguous bilge that Daniel then spoke

Made less sense than the yapping of a spaniel.

"Weighed in the balance to the utmost granule,

Found wanting." Why not just "You're going to croak"?

All right, that's not a literal translation.

But what came next was no big fat surprise:

Belshazzar didn't live to eat his breakfast.

A prophet, scared of sticking out his neck, fast-

Idious about his reputation,

Ought to be told that riddles are damned lies.

Serious talk now; let's not arse about.

December eight – what do we celebrate?

Come on, you know. Good – the Immaculate

Conception. When that apple-loving lout

Adam first took it in his head to flout

The Lord's law, angels said: "Evacuate,"

And firmly locked the paradisal gate,

Keeping his maculate descendants out.

Poor Mother Nature, ever since than ban,

Cannot breed even half a child that's blameless.

There boils within the rising prick of man

The seed of something terrible though nameless.

So praise to Joachim who, with Saint Ann,

Achieved a fuck that was uniquely shameless.

You know the day, the month, even the year.

While Mary ate her noonday plate of soup,

The Angel Gabriel, like a heaven-hurled hoop,

Was bowling towards her through the atmosphere.

She watched him aash the window without fear

And enter through the hole in one swift swoop.

A lily in his fist, his wings adroop,

"Ave," he said, and after that, "Maria.

Rejoice, because the Lord's eternal love

Has made you pregnant – not by orthodox

Methods, of course. The Pentecostal Dove

Came when you slept and nested in your box."

"A hen?" she blushed, "for I know nothing of -"

The Angel nodded, knowing she meant cocks.

Only a few weeks after did our Virgin see

The need to make a matrimonial match,

To build a nest wherein the egg could hatch

(Her little belly had begun to burgeon, see.)

It was, therefore, a matter of some urgency.

She didn't seek the freshest of the batch;

The one she gave her hand to was no catch,

But any port will do in an emergency.

The foolish gossips gossiped at the feast:

"She might have got a younger one at least,

Not an old dribbler frosty in the blood."

But that old dribbler dribbling by the side

Of such a beautiful and youthful bride

Found his dry stalk was bursting into bud.

Mary received, while burning Joseph's toast,

A letter. "Who the hell -?" (under her breath),

Aloud: "It's cousin Saint Elizabeth."

Elizabeth, it seemed, could also boast

A pregnancy, though not from the Holy Ghost.

Still, her next birthday was her sixtieth.

Though travel then was slow expensive death,

"We're coining," Mary wrote, then caught the post.

They went. After a short magnificat,

The women were soon chattering away

Of swellings, morning sickness, and all that.

Joseph decided that he'd like to stay

A month or so, and so hung up his hat

Better than sawing wood all bloody day.

From a far country – how far? Very far:

It grows, for instance, cinnamon and cocoa -

Three kings, their robes rococo or barocco,

Followed their leader – viz., that big bright star.

Each Magus had, like any czar or tsar,

Guards, steeds, a page, a clown with painted boko,

Coaches, a camel, and in leisured loco-

Motion they swayed towards where the Hebrews are.

They reached the stable with their caravan

One morning, evening, noon or afternoon,

With gifts – incense for God, and myrrh for man.

For Christ as king they had a gold doubloon -

Proper, they thought, for the top Christian.

They were, it seems, some centuries too soon.

Our Lady had a painful Christmas Day

And heaven the monopoly of mirth.

Between an ox and ass she brought to birth

A stableboy that stank of rags and hay.

His substitutive dad had to obey

The Jewish law, so look the Lord of Earth

Templewards, to have half a farthingsworth

Of hypostatic foreskin cut away.

Thirty years later saw the blessed Lord on

A journey to the rolling river Jordan

To be baptised by Mary's cousin's son.

A Christian man thus sprang from a prepuceless

Jew. I call most turncoats fucking useless

But make a rare exception for this one.

That sacred relic, by the way, was hid

And either kept in camphor or else iced.

It grew so precious it could not be priced.

And then one day His Holiness undid

A holy box and raised a holy lid -

Behold – the foreskin of our saviour Christ,

Shrimplike in shape, most elegantly sliced,

At last to profane eyes exhibited.

In eighty other Christian lands they show

This self-same prize for reverent eyes to hail.

You look incredulous, my friend. But know

That faith, though buffeted, must never fail.

The explanation's this: God let it grow

After the clipping, like a fingernail.

Joseph was doing bull-roars on his back,

A dream corrida crowd was yelling "Toro!"

He slept cut off from coming care and sorrow,

Making the stable shake with roar and rack.

But then an angel dealt him a rough smack

And said: "You know what day it is tomorrow?

The twenty-eighth. I managed, see, to borrow

A copy of the current almanac."

Herod announced the Feast of Childermass.

Joseph rushed out and had to pay a pretty

Price (how he cursed) for an old spavined ass:

A carpenter would rather gyp than be gypped.

And so they moved off mouselike towards Egypt,

Missing a lively day in David's city.

King Herod now, to minimal applause,

Ordered the babies to be stuck like swine.

There was an uproar then in Palestine

And not, O Jesus help us, without cause.

Those who had seen this coming did not pause

To hide their babes, but let them croon or whine

As visible as laundry on the line,

While they had masses said to Santa Claus.

Their saviour (saviour?) halfway to the delta

Smelt nothing of the filthy bloody welter

Nor heard the parents curse or ululate.

The troops of Herod smote and did not spare

But with each crack a splinter sought the air

And feebly tapped on heaven's heavy gate.

When he was old enough for politics

Jesus went splashing on the Jordan's bed.

He ceased to be a Jew and joined instead

The Apostolic Roman Catholics.

Then he went dropping homilies like bricks.

"He who seeks heaven with an unwashed head

Will see the kingdom with his arse," he said,

Shouting the odds, wagging his crucifix.

Only his mother got there unbaptised,

Which proves she waved goodbye to mother earth

A good Jewess, staunch in the faith and steady.