Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

ESARHADDON
Poems from Manuscripts 289
If you and I agree, who will refuse?
I care not, man, how it is done. Invent
Scriptures, forge ancient writings, let the wild
Mystics who slash their limbs on Baal’s hill,
Cry out the will of Baal while they slash.
You are subtle, if you choose. The head of all
Assyria’s state ecclesiastical,
Assured a twentieth of my revenues,
And right of all the offerings votaries heap
On Mithra, that’s promotion more than any
Onan can give, the sullen silent slave,
Or Ikbal Sufa with his politic brain.
Why that?
ACHAB
ESARHADDON
You think I do not know! I see
Each motion of your close conspiring brains,
Achab.
ACHAB
And if you do, why hold your hand?
ESARHADDON
That’s boldly questioned, almost honestly.
Because a State is ill preserved by blood.
The policy that sees a fissure here,
A wall in ill repair, and builds it up,
Is better than to raze the mansion down
And make it new. I know the people’s mind
Sick of a malady no leech can name;
I see a dangerous motion in the soil,