Authors: Philip Terry
We left the garden behind us, descending
By a long track, till we reached Square 2,
Which encompasses less space,
But greater pain. Nearby Todd Landman,
Professor of Government, has his desk,
Where he sits, interrogating new arrivals.
Barely have they entered his room
Than he shows them how many books he’s written;
If they have a weakness, he pounces on it,
And he, who is an expert judge,
Then leaps up, winding his scarf round his neck,
And tells them where to go.
‘Hi,’ he said, when he caught sight of me,
‘And welcome to the place where pain is host –
As we say round here, no pain no gain
(That’s one from our team in marketing).
Now, please, be careful where you go,
There’s a health and safety talk in half an hour,
And an address from our Faculty Manager
Will follow – be warned, it may be easy
To get in, but don’t let that deceive you.’
‘Put a sock in it you windbag,’
Said Berrigan, ‘this one doesn’t need
All that bullshit, he’s just visiting;
It is willed there where the power is,
That’s all
you have to know.’
And now the cries of anguish
struck my ears
Drowning out all else.
I came to a place void of light
Which rioted like the sea in a tempest
When it is buffeted by warring winds.
The hellish storm
forever tossed
helpless screaming spirits
into the black air
It was like some infernal
fairground ride
And when the faces whirled past our eyes
they had the look
of those grown sick with fear.
I learned that to such torment are doomed
The lustful,
who subject reason to appetite.
As the wings of crows roosting in winter
Bear them along in vast swirling flocks,
as Mark Cocker has written,
So that blast transported these souls,
Stretching as far as the eye can see.
And I asked: ‘Berrigan, tell me,
Who are these people, lashed in the black air?’
‘The one who’s just going by,’
Berrigan replied, ‘is Maeve, Queen of Connacht,
She had so many lovers you couldn’t count them,
And more husbands than the Wife of Bath;
In her kingdom she made lust and law alike.
It was she who started the cattle raid
To steal Ulster’s prize bull from her former husband,
And there are those who say she had bull-longing.
That other one is Marilyn, who slew
Herself for love, behind her’s Berlusconi
Whose scandal knew no shame,
That’s King Edward and Mrs Simpson, whose affair
Rocked the crown, then Bill Clinton,
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor,
And there’s Paris Hilton…’ – then over a thousand
Shades he showed to me, and pointing with
His finger gave me their stories.
When I had heard my teacher name so many,
I was overcome by pity, and felt faint.
‘Poet,’ I began, ‘I would like to talk to
That pair that go together
And seem so light upon the wind.’
‘Wait till they’re a bit nearer,’ he said,
‘If you entreat them in the name of
That love they share, they’ll come.’
As soon as the wind gusted them towards us
I raised my voice: ‘Oh wearied spirits!
Come and speak with us if it isn’t forbidden!’
And then, just as on
Shooting Stars
The dove comes down, when bidden, so those
Spirits issued from the band where Ulrika is,
Such was the power of my call.
When they came into view, I beheld
An aged tutor, balding on top,
And a young student, with coal black hair.
‘Oh living creature, gracious and kind,
Who goes through the black air
to visit us,’ said the girl,
‘Whatever you wish to hear
you shall hear it, whilst the wind,
as now, is silent for us.
The place I was born was Londonderry,
I came here to study,
and to escape the Troubles.
Love, quick to kindle in a seasoned heart,
Led my tutor to fall for my young body,
And I in turn loved back.’
‘Dear creature,’ I said, ‘the terrible torment
You suffer brings tears of pity
To my eyes,
but tell me,
How, and by what signs, did love let you
know your desires?’
And she replied: ‘There is no greater pain
Than to recall a happy time from a state
Of wretchedness (as your companion knows)
But if you wish to know
the first root of our love
I will tell it, though I weep.
It was the Essex way, when Donald Davie still
Held sway, to teach in tutorials, one on one;
One day, the course was LT361:
Arthurian Literature, we were comparing
Malory with an Old French version of
The legend; we read of Lancelot,
Of how he fell in love, time and again
Our eyes were united by the text,
Gregory tried to impress me with an
Interpretative aside; we blushed.
To the movement of one line alone we yielded:
When we read about the forbidden kiss
Then my teacher kissed me on the mouth
Tremblingly; that book was our Galeotto;
That day we read it no further.’
Whilst the one spirit thus spake she wept
Constantly, while the other bowed his head.
The sight of these wretched souls filled me with pity,
And I fell, as a body, dead, falls.
Regaining now my senses, which had zoned out
At the sight of that old roué
and his student
New wretchedness and new sinners retching
I see, wherever I move,
wherever I look.
I am in the sewer that is Square 3,
Fast food joints all around me,
Knee-deep in chip cartons and half-chewed kebabs;
Men in boiler suits hose it with jet sprays,
The dirty water fills the air, like Irish mist,
The stink never leaves the place.
There’s a stoner wearing dreads and
A filthy poncho, with a three-headed
bulldog on a frayed bit of string,
The dog’s six eyes are bloodshot, the three mouths
Black, the three bellies swollen, ribs poking out –
It’s like something out of
Harry Potter.
Spilling from Food on 3 and the SU bar,
Hung-over students howl like mutts
slipping and sliding in the filth.
When the slimy hound got a sniff of us,
He pulled on the leash, snarling,
showing his fangs.
Berrigan, my guide, bent down slowly,
Without taking his eyes off the beast, and,
spreading wide his wiry fingers,
Shovelled up a fistful of spewed-up sausage
And beans, flinging it down those
gawping gullets.
As a famished hound, hungering to
Be fed, quiets down when you bring out the Bonzo,
So the filthy heads now ceased their barking.
We walked across this slippery square
Of shades squirming in the soup,
When one of them sat up suddenly:
‘You there, on a tour of Hell’s diners,’
He beckoned, ‘do you not remember my face,
For you were born before I expired.’
I said: ‘It may be the torments you
suffer have disfigured you,
I can’t put a name to your face,
But my memory is not
What it was
tell me who you are.’
‘Your own city,’ he said, ‘so full of hate
It overflows the pan,
Once held me in the fresh air above.
Your people called me Round Nick
And I’m damned
for always stuffing my fat face,
All the bodies flattened here
Share in my sin
and in my pain.’
‘Nick,’ I said to him, ‘I recall you now,
And your sad suffering makes me weep,
But tell me what’ll happen, if you can,
To the people of that divided state,
And are there any honest men among them?
And tell me, why is it so fucked up?’
‘Some blame the Act of Union, some Kitty O’Shea,
Some the Brits, some the Prods, some the IRA,
but sheer bigotry has played its
Part, coupled with sectarianism
And lust for power. Who knows
when the violence will run its course?
There are honest men, but no-one wants to know,
For pride and hate and envy are the three
Tunes the Orangemen sing,
They kindle in men’s hearts, and set them ablaze.’
With this his dirge ended, but I answered:
‘Tell me more, what of
Rowlands, and Trimble, who had such good
Intentions, Cathal Goulding,
Michael Farrell, and the rest,
Bent on doing good? Where are they?
Do they taste Heaven’s sweetness
or Hell’s tandoori?’
‘Some taste Heaven’s sweetness, others lie
Below with blacker souls. If you keep on,
You may see them still. I speak no more.’
He twisted his great head towards me
And eyed me a moment,
Then rolled beneath the scum.
Berrigan, my guide, then spoke:
‘He’ll wake no more till Donald Davie
Blows his shrill whistle,
Then the dead souls will put on
Flesh once more,
and face their
viva voce
.’
And so we splashed through the filth
Of goners and doners,
Talking a little of the afterlife.
I said: ‘Master, will these torments be increased,
Or lessened, on Finals’ Day,
Or will the misery remain the same?’
And Berrigan: ‘Remember your theory;
The more a thing is subject to deconstruction,
As Derrida says, the more monstrous
Its pleasure, or its pain.’ We
Talked of Foucault, and punishment,
And Ginsters, till we came to a steep bank;
There we found Mervyn King, man’s arch-enemy.
‘Give Col a bonus! Give Col a bonus!’
The voice of Mervyn King spat out these words,
And Berrigan, my guide,
Whispered: ‘Don’t let him freak
You out, he’s a powerful mother,
But he can’t stop our campus tour.’
Then he turned towards that bloated countenance,
Saying, ‘Shut it, moneybags,
Feed on last night’s oysters that rot your guts,
This tour of your wretched kingdom
Has Dean’s approval, and funding
from the AHRC.’
As sails, swollen by wind, collapse
when the yacht’s mast snaps,
So the savage beast collapsed before our eyes,
And then we started up those slippery steps,
Past wasted students stopped for a smoke,
that led to Square 4.
Who could imagine misery
as strange as I saw here,
Like something out of Dalí.
As a speeding car on the road loses its
Grip on the tarmac, spinning into a stream of
Oncoming traffic, so these folk danced the conga;
More sinners were here than anywhere below
And from both sides, to the piercing cry of their
Screams, chests stuck out, they rolled giant coins,
And when they clashed against each other they
Turned to push the other way, one bunch yelling
‘What’s the point in saving?’, the other bunch
‘Take out an ISA!’ And so they whirled round
A grooved circle of pale concrete, like a
Treadmill, some retreating as far as Barclays,
Some sheltering near the Abbey. Then once more
They clash and turn and roll in their circular joust.
And I, shaken by such a sight,
Turned to Berrigan, my guide: ‘Tell me, master,
Who are these wretched souls?
Were they all moneylenders?’
He said: ‘Up above, the souls
you see here
had such myopic minds
They could not judge with moderation
when it came to money. The ones
with nothing on top were loan-sharks,
Or managed Building Societies, amassing fortunes,
While whole generations went to the wall
struggling to pay back mortgages.’
‘Ted,’ I said, ‘if I may, I reckon
I should be able to recognise a few of these,
Not least the shit who sold me shares in Gartmore,
Just before the Credit Crunch.’
And he replied: ‘Dream on, buddy,
The undistinguished life
of these moneygrubbers
That made them slaves to cash,
Now makes it hard to tell them apart.
Squandering and hoarding robbed them
Of any life, enlisting them in this scrum,
What more can I say?
Here you see the short-lived mockery
Of Capital,
for which men bicker and connive.
As Dylan said: “All the money
you made
will never buy back your soul.”’
‘This Capital you speak of,
what is it,
that has the world so in its clutches?’
And he replied: ‘People are mugs,
things of real value,
friendship, love,
Poetry, health,
they ride over roughshod
for a slice of Capital’s cake.
Commodity fetishism rules the day
drowning us in a sea of white goods
and smart gadgets,
Online markets transfer empty futures
through time and space
beyond all human wit to tell.
One state grows fat with power,
another lean,
according to Capital’s law
Which (like a snake in the grass) cannot
be seen.
Nothing human can touch it,
Capital divides
and rules its kingdom
Like a greedy spoilt dictator.
Its changing changes never rest,
Now in houses, now in arms, gold, wheat,
Beef, rice, diamonds, manganese,
Tumbling markets keep it constantly
in motion, as investors come and go,
glad to be part of the ride.
But now let us go on to greater sorrow
night is coming
we’ve no time to lose.’
We crossed Square 4 to the other side,
Past Happy Days, where tomato ketchup spills
Into a trench formed by its overflow;
That stream was darker than blood
And we, accompanied by that shadowy sauce,
Moved down along a strange path.
When it has reached the foot of a
Grey slope, that melancholy stream descends,
forming a black lake.
And I, peering into its depths,
Could make out muddied students in that slime
Totally naked and their faces mad.
They struck each other not only with hands,
But with their heads and chests and feet,
And tore each other apart with knives.
Berrigan, my guide, said: ‘These are the
Souls of Greek and Turkish MA students
Who war on campus after dark,
Full of hate and anger; and beneath
The surface there are arts students
Whose sighs make the bubbles you can see.
Wedged in the slime they say: “We were lazy
Sods and never turned up for lectures;
Most of the time we were completely stoned,
Now we are lazy sods in the black mud.”
This is the dirge they gurgle in their throats,
They can’t even get their words out properly.’
And so, across the water,
we circled that disgusting pond
Our eyes glued to the slime swallowers.
We came, at last, to a tower’s base.