III—The Book of Ezra.
1. Dawned the 7th month:
Ex-Babylon, all Israelis were again urbanites,
and communally held cattle, mules,
all vital wares and tools,
and even the peculiar estates
kept up by singers, poets, and “lucky bastoods”
(the dynamic detritus of scrota).
All were ready now to crush rock
and dent stone.
2. A crown is just a gutted hat, eh?
But Jeshua got to sport one,
in tandem with Zero
(both blessed by a posse of priests),
by arranging for the ochre-coloured stones
to be employed in engineering God’s Altar.
3. (The sounds of the stones being trundled,
cut, rolled, pushed, and crowbarred or bashed
into place,
executed a sort of sloppy be-bop.)
4. Once the Altar was ready,
Jews served up blackened meats—
even birds’ bitter, ground-down bones—
to please God’s nostrils
and keep His alliance versus the heathen tribes.
5. Cleavers broached chickens’ necks;
steam squeaked and squealed outta kettles;
sneaky hammers slapped into calves’ brains:
Thus, the tabernacular feasts got kept—
the burnt offerings set out—
morning and night.
6. Incessant were the dishes—
presented on new moons and other holy days,
amid the comic menstruation
of slain poultry, cattle,
in the dinning, braying, bleating, roaring Butchery.
7. From Day 1 of the 7th month,
meats got seared and scorched and charred—
to induce God to respect Israelites’ murmurs.
Yet, the Temple was still more a blueprint
than it was even a basement.
8. Masons got handed coins; carpenters pawed cash;
the proletariat got furnished hors’doeuvres
off the snack trucks—
wine, sandwiches, milk, honey, beer.
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s cedars got lopped,
logged, to be sculpted up in Jerusalem.
9. One year after the return to Jerusalem—
i.e., in the 3rd month of the 2nd year—
Jeshua and Zero appointed the Levites
to oversee construction
and the crafting,
thus directing the gallant, God-enchanted—
never famished workers—
whom, despite being so well-victual’d,
still let wine and beer leak down their throats
in unholy draughts—
without ever letting up.
10. The people—priests, stone-cutters,
axe-men, carvers, blacksmiths, poets, vintners,
butchers, cooks, bee-keepers, shepherds,
singers, milkmaids, wet-nurses, medicine men,
et cetera—
toiled—
especially those muscular, hefty, bearded,
brawny, beefy, and virile—
or Amazonian or Juno-like.
Nowhere was any dishonourable sweat!
11. The Temple foundation laid,
priests dressed up with trumpets;
the Levites’ fists bashed cymbals:
Paeans to God—no caw-caw of blues—
rose cantankerous, brash, into the air.
12. Voices spurted, blurted, song—
to appeal to God for constant Joy
and to ballyhoo the Temple construction.
13. Seeing the new foundation dug and concretized,
the elders, recalling the original Temple,
felt Emotion well up in their throats
and spill from their eyes.
14. Like two streams conjoining
in a slippery ditch,
weeping mixed with boomeranging shouts,
as Celebration reverberated—
as if the Temple stones, set in place,
represented a cargo ferrying Rebellion—
a Lego-block Trojan Horse (so to speak)—
now canting against years of furious,
rapacious, cannibalistic, and dirty, filthy,
Assyrian-Babylonian Imperialism.
[BDL—Windsor Locks (Connecticut) 3 mars mmxviii]
VIII—The Book of Ezra.
1. Paternity is a question of Maternity (always);
but the following rabble accompanied me,
Ezra, as we exited Babylon:
2. 1,496 grumbling scoundrels—
some as cunning as butchers
or barbers—
and all dudes—as if ladies don’t count.
3. At that river that runs—
like a gilded ditch—
to Agawa,
birds blundered down from the thundering sky.
4. I gathered the teachers, the poets:
I sent em to seek out Edouardo,
il duce of Casablanca,
to tell im to cull the best servants
and ship to Jerusalem to serve
at the Tempio.
5. I wanted the Solomon, the Confucius,
the Jefferson—these types of thoughtful governors—
as servants in the Tempio.
Omit any opioid-addled imbeciles!
Men of insight—solely—for the Ministry!
Abcedarians: Prosaic, sobre, sombre!
No one cooking up greasy, sugary, fatty,
cheesy, salty, or buttery verses!
No psychopaths or sycophants!
6. Choice profs, designated by name.
Men of bons mots and bon sang.
Good breeding and good heads.
No bastoods!
7. By the River Agawa, I told all to fast.
We should travel with God’s Grace,
avoid obstacles, hindrances,
and hazard no bellicose periplum.
8. Perhaps I should’ve hired on a few
of King Tax’s troops as a Secret Service detail;
employed a few guys as callous as are muscles.
But I’d said that God’s Protection was enough
(“a virtual bombshell gainst our enemies”)—
and I couldn’t retract the sentiment.
9. So, we prayed for God’s Protection,
and we fasted.
I believe that God gave us His Assurance.
We’d not end up as caca—
like any spontaneously aborted fetus.
Nor feed hungry bullets!
Nor fall to insects matured to monsters.
10. I selected 12 priests, 12 aides,
and weighed out pounds
(in £ sterling)
of copper, silver, gold—
all to be poured into the Tempio—
and gave the guys £650 of silver
and silverware,
plus £100 of copper
and £100 of gold.
11. I added also 20 gold bowls
(reborn from sun-dials)
worth £1000,
and two candle-holders of bronze
as lustrous as gold.
12. I told my clerical secretariat,
“Thou art holy in God’s sight,
as are the clusters of precious metals
given into thy stewardship,
but consigned to God.
13. “Watch over—preserve—these treasures
and weigh all carefully before the Temple
congregation at Jerusalem.
Any discrepancy in amounts—
between now and then—
will be considered red-handed Theft
and there’ll soon be footage
of thy heads tumbling off thy shoulders.
Best hear me! See?”
14. And so the 24 got outfitted
with their weighed and weighty cargo—
the shiny filing of the caravan—
and then they disappeared,
dwindling into the horizon,
toward Jersualem.
15. Then the remainder of our number,
on the 12th of Nisan
(aprile or pluviôse),
left the Agawa River Canyon,
bound also for Jerusalem.
But heathen foes—those unbridled sewers—
that hoard (or horde) of dung—
awaited us in ambush.
16. But God smacked em down as easy
as if each were a spineless horsefly.
(Decay they now in fathomless dirt.)
17. Reached Jerusalem. 3-day march.
Rested 3 days.
18. On Day 4, we laid out the treasure cargo
in the Tempio.
It was an encircling spillage,
and each item got weighed
as light shot from the gleaming metals,
irradiating the chamber.
19. Once exiles, but now liberated
from Slavery,
we now offered God our burnt trophies:
12 bulls, 96 rams, 77 lambs, and 12 goats.
Butchers stood game to cut throats,
while chefs turned arsonists
at fireplaces.
The day was literally “slash-and-burn”!
Temporarily, the Tempio seemed
an alabaster abbatoir,
an uncontainable charnel house.
20. Now was the time for me to deliver
the Diktats of King Tax
to the provincial governors beyond the river.
And no grudging “asphyxiation”
in the telling!
[Nanaimo (British Columbia)
5-6 Nisan /avril mmxviii]
