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.’
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.
CANTO VII
‘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.
CANTO VIII
Before we reached the foot
of that tower
Our eyes had been glued to its tip
Where two flashlights morsed,
And, so far off our peepers could barely see,
Another flashlight signalled back.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, turning to Berrigan,
‘We’re nicked.’ ‘No such luck,’ he replied,
‘Feast your eyes on the filthy water,
You’ll see our welcoming party soon enough,
Unless the marsh’s vapours
hide it.’
An SLR never shot a bullet
That cut through flesh faster
Than the coracle, covered in Tesco’s bags,
That skimmed towards us, drawn by the shades
Of Brent geese, culled for the royal visit,
With a solitary helmswoman, who was yelling:
‘Now I’ve got you, you wretched soul!
Prepare to burn!’ ‘Hold your geese,
Boudicca,’ my guide replied,
‘This dude’s just visiting.’ If you’ve seen
Someone looking real pissed when they find
Out they’ve been swindled – that was Boudicca.
As Berrigan stepped into the coracle
he handed me a pill,
saying,
‘You might need one of these,’
And only when I followed
did the coracle begin to rock.
As we cruised the course of that dead lake
Before me there rose up a mud-bespattered shape,
Saying: ‘Who are you, come before you’re called?’
And I replied: ‘Though I come here, I’ve
No intention of staying; but who are you
Sporting that mud-soaked mullet?’
‘As you can see,’ he said, ‘I’m one who weeps.’
‘Weep on,’ I replied, ‘for even covered in that
Stinking slime, I recognise you.’
Like a zombie he reached out to rock the boat,
But Berrigan my guide pushed him off with a kick,
Saying: ‘Get down there with the other dogs!’
Then he hugged me,
saying: ‘God bless you!
Up above this arrogant arsehole
Was obsessed with promotion,
selling himself to the highest bidder,
like the Whore of Babylon.
Many in LiFTS think themselves great scholars,
who here will wallow like pigs in muck,
leaving behind their repulsive fame.
In life he did nothing good, and so
his shade is filled with rage.’
‘Master,’ I said, ‘call me a sadist,
But I’d love to see him dumped
deep in the slop,
before we leave.’
‘Just watch,’ Berrigan replied, and soon after
I saw the wretch set upon
by a crowd:
‘Get Harry Potter!’ they all shouted,
And at that war cry the Frankfurter, gone mad,
Turned on himself and bit his own fingers,
The blood oozing like ketchup.
We left him there, I’ll say no more about him.
The sound of drum and bass began to pound my ears
And made me peer ahead across the water.
‘Approaching,’ said Berrigan, ‘is Cannabis Castle,
with its iron walls and its hardened dopers.’
And I: ‘Already I can see the
bright glow of the spliffs
across the swamp.’
And he to me: ‘Those are rather fires,
From nightlights carelessly left burning
On stereos and televisions,
Causing the eternal conflagration
that burns within,
that no fire-extinguisher can put out.’
We sailed around till at last we
reached the shore, where Boudicca shouted:
‘Alight here! This is the entrance-way!’
I saw the best minds of the Student Union
Perched above the gates, enraged, screaming:
‘Who’s this cunt approaching? Who, without a
Student card, dares to enter the kingdom of
The dead?’ My wise teacher flashed his ID,
Asking to speak to them in private.
They suppressed their rage enough to say:
‘You may enter, but that breather
goes no further.
Let him retrace his fool’s path
alone, let’s see him try.
You’re staying right here where you belong!’
Gentle reader, imagine how I shat myself
,
When those words reached my ears!
I thought I’d never see the light of day more.
‘Ted,
don’t leave me here,
I beg you!’ I cried,
‘If we can’t go any further,
let’s turn tail now,
while we still can.’
Then Berrigan, who had guided me this far,
Took out his Lucky Strikes,
and offered me a smoke.
‘Wait here,’ he said, ‘and don’t despair yet.
You can bet your bottom dollar
I won’t leave you in this hell-hole.’
At this, he walked away,
to parley with them,
Leaving me to battle with my thoughts.
I couldn’t hear what he proposed,
but they were having none of it.
I saw them turn
and shut the heavy gates
In Berrigan’s face.
He turned towards me
His eyes downcast,
playing with his beard.
‘Who are these shits to forbid my entrance