ERASMUS EYEBALL STUDIES: THE BIBLICAL BEGAT


Was Adam begetting before the Fall?
On this the Scriptures are not clear at all.
Yet after the serpent had got its way,
They say he was busy every day.
He fixed on Eve a permanent passion
And peopled the earth in carnal fashion.

*
In time begetters grew so out of hand
That a flood was decreed to drown the land.
Big Noah caulked planks in the drenching dark
And ruled out sex when he floated the ark.
The beasts which he led in two by two
Were told to cool it till the voyage was through.

*
The ur-figure, Abraham, wearing a smile,
Was up to the mark for a very long while.
The centenerian tiptoed lightly
To nonagenerian Sarah nightly.
This golden oldie had plenty of fun
Begetting Isaac, his favourite son.

*
Historical books like Chronicles tell
Of the kings who begat in Israel.
When the dying David lost all his heat,
A maiden was sent to him tout de suite:
And Sheba's queen gives a lift to the story
Of Solomon in 'all his glory'.

*
From Genesis down to the Maccabees,
The going was good and life was a breeze.
Shem, Ham and Japheth, Magog and Javan,
John (also called Gaddi) and Avaran:
Each followed the guideline that God had set-
'Take you a wife, and begin to beget.'

*
A change in the rules for every nation
Is shown in the Book of Revelation.
When the clocks each give a strangled chime
To announce the end of ordinary time,
A brand new order will see to it that
The game of begetting becomes old hat.

RAPE OF THE TAUNG CHILD

2,000,000 BCE

Just three,

she is always so quick

to run back to the clan:

immature, in fact,

but with a body

equipped

for the scald of the veld.

Watch jackal,

she is warned:

baboon, also.

It knows its trick

and its teeth

are long.

Her dark nails

worry

at the clay.

The mother and two aunties

in their oestrus

are harvesting a patch.

They bicker

with a patriarch

who services their hour.

*

He drops

to his lodestone

like the lightning flash:

a wing-wide

visitation

from above:

blotches and bars

underneath

and

extreme feathers

frilling.

She

tries to run,

but his talons

are anchored

in her skull.

The raptor

jumps and jostles

over her cries.

The mentors quail

before this sky-bird's

haughty snark.

Her

last view

is in terror

before small legs

collapse.

She's sucked

into the vortex

of a bright

and curious

stare.

*

He enters her

at will

with claw

and keyhole-cutting

beak

rips out

her eye-balls

not-yet-unfolded uterus

and gut

then freights

her tasselled residues

to cram

his gaping young.

*

In their Australopithecine way

the elders are bereft

by the exaction

of a sacrifice.

read on Bush Radio, Cape Town: 2 July 2006