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At Lunch With Ramases I In Thebes, 5
Why did I schedule this lunch and our talk?
Great Horemheb said, once, never to sulk
about a question. The expedient
answer---even if an experiment---
whenever well considered should present
the steps that lead to sensible solution,
and bring offending matters to conclusion.
With Horemheb's open, grateful, consent,
I ordered a swift, sudden massacre
of those who wore the Aten's simple cross.
Its brutal elegance served to deter
further expansion of the heresy.
Records and monuments were quietly
expunged. Those people's deaths were no great loss.
I think we must look to a similar
action against our Hebrew population.
Now is the time, and we must seize the hour,
and strike, to slow down, their multiplication:
before they take---how much, a tenfold---power?,
and placed upon our backs the tallied bricks.
That would be worse than all the Heretic's
twisted ideas that he sought to impose
on Kem, and our empire, until we rose
to strike him and his new faith down. The order
I give today, against all Hebrew boys,
two years old or less, and border to border.
Be sure the army ruthlessly deploys
the utmost prejudice against this foe.
Strike, now, great chimes to ring out new death knells.
You worry if the Nile's refreshing flood---
that waters the two Kingdom's thirst---should flow
crimson because we have spilled all that blood?
You are quite clever, and will find the wells
from which you and your staff can take a drink.
Get on with it. Do not pause to reflect.
Such wating can detain, or stall, direct
efforts up and down the commands whole chain.
Such hesitations will, forever, be
opposed to those who have the will to reign.
For most men, like the Aten heresy,
favor the weaker and the cowardly---
as long as men are flesh, and monkeys stink.
Starward
[jlc]
