Samson: a Ballad

Tags

Ashkelon, ballad, Dagon, Delilah, Gazites, Hebron, jawbone of an ass, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Manoah, Philistines, Samson, Timnath, Weimarer Stadtschloss

(Samson Fighting the Lion: Lucas Cranach

the Elder ; Weimarer Stadtschloss;

Accession No G12)

 

Manoah wept: he had no son.

An angel told his wife:

You will conceive a son and give

him up to God for life.

 

This angel came again and he

had piercing azure eyes.

Manoah, liking what he said,

offered to sacrifice

 

a kid to God and, in the smoke,

the spirit heavenwards

ascended, while the man and wife

pondered on his words.

 

Samson grew in stature tall;

a razor did not trim

his hair, as he was set aside:

the role of Judge, for him.

 

A daughter of his enemies

came to his notice, so,

in spite of what his father said,

to Timnath he would go.

 

Meeting a lion would not prevent

his marriage to a stranger.

He tore the animal apart

(its threat to him no danger.)

 

And, when he passed the carcase next,

bees had filled its middle.

Scooping out honey, he laughed aloud:

Aha!  I have a riddle!

 

Thirty young men attended the feast.

What is strong, but also sweet?

He bet they’d never work it out,

but Samson’s wife was not discreet.

 

The answer, pressured out of her,

Samson lost the forfeit,

but he went down to Ashkelon

and found a way to cheat:

 

he offered the thirty all the fruits

he’d pillaged, far and wide.

Father-in-law was unimpressed

and gave away the bride.

 

Please let me sleep with her, Sam cried,

but ‘father-in-law’ rejected

his overtures and offered up

someone unexpected.

 

Raging, Samson stormed to the fields,

fiery foxes tying

by their tails, igniting corn,

until the crops were dying.

 

The Philistines burned Samson’s ‘wife’

in retaliation.

He took the jawbone of an ass;

displayed his indignation.

 

Twenty years passed and he

the role of Judge enacted,

but, like a moth to candle flames,

was fatally attracted

 

to a harlot (spied upon) –

a honey trap, or bait.

Gazites lay in wait for him.

He made off with the gate

 

and posts, which held the city wall.

He carried them to Hebron.

Enough of whores: he fell in love,

exhibiting his brawn,

 

but not his brain.  Delilah (bribed)

to find his secret strength,

determined, showing greed and pique,

to go to any length

 

until he was unwise and told

how he eschewed a razor.

And, when his hair was shorn away,

his weakness did amaze her.

 

The Spirit of the Lord had left

and Samson, unaware,

had eyes gouged out; was bound with chains

now that he’d lost his hair.

 

A trophy, he would grind the corn,

till Dagon’s feast came round

and then, for sport, they hauled him out-

still bloodied, beaten, bound.

 

Two pillars served as a support,

to lean against the stone,

but hair had grown; his strength returned –

he gave a mighty groan.

 

O let me die with Philistines,

he prayed.  Thy will be done.

He brought the house down literally

and killed them – every one.

 

They buried him beside Manoah.

A Deliverer he’d become,

achieving more in death than life,

foreshadowing God’s son.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lenten Villanelle

Tags

1 Chronicles 14, Baal- Perazim, balsam tree, King David, Lent, Philistines, Populus balsamifera, Psalm 84, Rephaim, sussuration, Valley of Baca, villanelle

(Balsam- Populus balsamifera)

 

Love the phrase:  ‘Who going through the Valley of Baka maketh

it a well,’ from Psalm 84.  It relates to King David fighting the

Philistines in the Rephaim Valley.

I also liked the translation: ‘Valley of Breakthrough.’

There is more detail in 1 Chronicles, chapter 14, where

a previous victory is described.  David employs a different

military strategy on the second occasion.

Here’s the poem:

 

Blessed is the man whose lamentation

is overcome by digging for a well-

even in desert peregrination.

 

Israel, Judah became one nation

and the Philistines could no longer quell

David’s army.  Divine exhortation

 

inspired a strategic operation

and grasshoppers routed the infidel:

lamentation turned to jubilation.

 

Baal-Perazim introduced elation,

but now rearguard action relied on smell

from balsam trees and the sussuration

 

of their leaves.  The wind, on this occasion,

convinced those warrior giants by some spell,

or by an auditory sensation

 

that reinforcements, an augmentation

of David’s troops would bring a living hell.

Blessed is that man, whose lamentation

converts to joy, mid-peregrination.

 

 

 

 

Blobfish etc

Tags

blobfish, Donatella Versace, Edinburgh Festival, Facebook, foreskin, International Ugly Animal Preservation Society, Jabba the Hutt, John Prescott, leftvent angler fish, Mr Blobby, Philistines, Reduced Shakespeare Co, Rollinng Stones, Samson, Tasman Sea, trout pout

(Drawing by Alan Riverstone McCulloch)

 

They come from the Tasman Sea and ichthyologists

say they are the ugliest fish in the seas.

Well, my granny used to tell me there were plenty

more of them in that particular element. But I do

wonder how they manage to attract the opposite sex and

propagate, when they look like Mr Blobby in the act of

frowning.

They have been likened to Donatella Versace, Jabba the

Hutt, John Prescott and a beardless Col. Sanders.

The male becomes a big bag of testes and that’s his sole use

in life.

Which reminds me of a joke delivered by The Reduced

Shakespeare Company, in Edinburgh, at The Festival, some

years ago.  They were producing The Bible on stage, in a rapid

series of sketches, as was their wont.

One of the actors, wearing an animal skin, rushed towards the

audience and boasted:

I took the foreskins of the Philistines!

His sidekick queried this utterance by asking:

What’s a foreskin?

It’s that useless bit of flesh that hangs on the end of a penis,

said Samson.

Oh! rejoined the stooge.  I thought that was a man!

Cue for hysterical feminist guffaws.

Anyway, why does the blobfish expand in such a manner?

Apparently it is a strategy to ensure that sex happens in a

big environment.  It is one way of being noticed.

Maybe they could sign up to Facebook, or a fishy dating agency?

Yes, blobfish are arguably uglier than the naked mole rat, which

is the mascot of the International Ugly Animal Preservation

Society.

However, they are not so desperate as the male leftvent angler

fish, which may fuse himself, along with other males, onto the

female, and, in the manner of Hamlet’s aspirations, thaw and resolve

themselves into a dew, melting the skin of their mouths and the

female flesh until they absorb blood vessels and the two, or twenty

two, become one.

Cue for further feminist reaction.

I mean, sometimes a girl just wants to go shopping without a male

being joined to her hip, monitoring her spending.

I only saw one example of an even uglier specimen on my travels

Down Under.  It was on a Rolling Stones comeback poster and I’m

not saying to which member of the band I am referring.

But think Trout Pout.

 

 

Gey Thrawn

Tags

Apocalypse, Burke, Philistines, pikestaffs, rushlight, schiltron, Scottish Assembly, The Grey Lady, The Iron Lady, thrawn, Wee Eck

The rush light guttered.  It made for chilling reading.  Diana had borrowed

Mrs C’s copy of Burke and terrified herself by reading his summing up of

the aftermath of revolution.

They have found their punishment in their success.  Laws overturned;…industry without vigour; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid,…the people impoverished;…everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the [likely] consequence.

Something cold touched the nape of her neck.  Bannocks!  That wasn’t The

Grey Lady, was it?  She wished it was a return of The Iron Lady, if only to

enjoy the spectacle of Wee Eck being told to stand in the corner- for a

couple of decades, with a dunce’s cap on his noddle.

It was late.  She shouldn’t frighten herself by reading any more.  She

would have nightmares. But she felt ashamed that she had not really

informed herself sufficiently, like many others, and now the Apocalypse,

like the Philistines, was practically upon them.

Aux armes, citoyens!  Wait a minute!  Whose side had they been on? 

She continued:

Were all these dreadful things necessary?  Were they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle of determined patriots, compelled to wade through blood…tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil and prosperous liberty?  No!  Nothing like it.

The ruinations will not be the devastation of civil war; they [will be] ‘the sad but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace’…Not one drop of their blood have they shed in the cause of the country they have ruined.

Mrs C knocked on the door.

I’ve brought you a wee hot water bottle.  Well, it’s what we use.  Is

everything all right, dear?

Thanks.  Yes.  I don’t know.  Oh, Mrs C, listen to this!

If the leaders should be activated by sinister ambition, and a lust of meretricious glory, then the… Assembly, to whom at first they conform, becomes in its turn the dupe and instrument of their designs.  In this political traffic, the leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the followers to become subservient to the worst designs of their leaders.

Och, the next bit is the one I like aboot inferior, mechanical members of their

professions who join projects which lay them open to lucrative deals.  He calls

such as they fomenters and conductors of the petty war of village vexation.

Nothing in heaven or earth can serve as a control on them.

Pretty pessimistic then?  Diana gathered her pashmina to her shoulders.

Weel, he says those who attempt to level never equalise and certain men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression, if such as they, individually, or collectively, are permitted to rule.

Onywise, there’s little ye can do noo and ye huvnae the vote onywey.  The

Scots are never undecided.  You wait!  They’ll be gathering in their schiltrons

on Judgement- eh, polling day and woe betide onyone who dares tae meddle

wi’ their free consciences.  They can be gey thrawn and dinna appreciate

onyone assuming that they know whit they’re thinkin.’  Ah widnae like tae

be charging intae their solid line o’ pikestaffs.

Noo, wi’ a’ respect, put oot yer light and settle doon.