Poem

Peter Porter

Side by side

Discs with Everything

Moses had a trusted follower
at a level lower than his own
who helped to carry down the Decalogue
from Sinai. What’s not well-known
is that the Tablets this time came
with special offers, if he filled the form in,
of incisive and assured declensions
of parallel religions from established
and adjacent states, Assyria, Egypt
and a place called Pontus. He shook them out
over his waste-papyrus basket –
they made quite a clatter. Nothing, he said,
can match the matchless offers of the Lord.

Later there were so many unsolicited
additionals to be discounted.
Along with his Vita Nuova, Dante
was obliged to include a CD
of extracts from the Summa Theologica
and an offer of a year’s subscription
to the whole concordance. Paradise Lost
was similarly intruded on
by Affairs of State in tiny type
endorsed by Andrew Marvell
on reproduction House-of-Commons-
headed paper. Many decades on, Mein Kampf
was outweighed by its onanist inclusions.

Today we know that when tomorrow dawns
all separate offers will be off –
a crowded planet’s just an insight
into Heaven or its still invisible
other side, as Hell, and souls will be
unseparate as Blake’s hunched grains of sand.
But this we cannot feel because we clutch
our own Complete and Finished Works
and have been promised readership
and plaudits. Is it my impulsive notes,
my sugared sonnets or my wizened words
you’ll love? I have a dusty disc which played
will cry and cry and will not be switched off.