To the halls of grief?
But don’t worry,
They haven’t got a leg to stand on.
This insolence of theirs is nothing new,
They showed it once before, at the Knowledge Gateway,
Which I can assure you
is now unlocked.
You saw the deadly words inscribed on its portals.
And now, already through them, comes one
Who will open this fucking gate for us.’
CANTO IX
When I saw Berrigan bounced back,
Anger painting his complexion red,
I turned white as a sheet;
He tried to calm himself,
Taking a long drag
on his cigarette.
‘Why the Hell are they blocking our path,
Surely… but no, we’ve been promised help
From the highest authority,
We just need to play it cool.’
I saw all too clearly how his words
Plastered over a niggling doubt,
And couldn’t help imagining the worst:
This is where our journey ends,
And there’s no way back.
Tentatively, I put the question to him:
‘Has anyone from your circle
Ever entered the halls before?’
At first he looked at me frowningly,
Then he chuckled,
flicking away his ash.
‘I see where you’re coming from,’ he said.
‘Only once in a blue moon
is someone foolish enough
To make this trip on which I go,
But in fact I’ve been down here
once before.
We were running out of weed,
Not to mention amphetamines,
And Ed Dorn bet me a quarter
I couldn’t blag my way in here to score.
Security wasn’t so tight back then,
I followed the beat up to the tenth floor
Where a guy called Rots used to have digs,
A maths student who supported himself by dealing.
To cut a long story short, I won the bet.’
He said more, too, but I forget the details,
For suddenly my eyes were drawn upwards
To a window near the top of the tower
Where three drunk students
Were leaning out, their hair dyed blonde,
Their look betraying a bad attitude.
They had fuck-off faces, heavily beslapped,
Their eyebrows studded with diamonds,
And round their bare waists hung gold chains.
Berrigan, who knew well the SU crowd,
Cried out:
‘Look! The Essex Girls!
That’s Big Meg, the one on the left,
And that one raving on the right’s Sexy Lexi,
Tiffany’s the one in the middle.’
In a flash they stuck out their tits
Then turned round
to show us their arses.
‘Jordan, over ’ere, we’ll give him a boner!’
They shouted, leering down at us
Through false eyelashes.
‘Turn around now and shut your eyes,’
Said my gentle guide, ‘for if Jordan comes,
No mortal can resist her charms.’
Thus spoke Berrigan, who stubbed out his fag,
And turned me around himself,
Putting his sticky fingers over my eyes.
(All of you here who understand textual
Analysis and hermeneutics, note
The symbolism in the above passage;
Any resemblance of the characters
To persons living or dead
Is coincidental.)
And then, across the filthy water,
Came an explosion of sound
Which made both sides of the lake tremble.
It sounded like one of those freak hurricanes
Whipped up by the clash of counter-temperatures
That tear through buildings and streets
Tossing trees and cars aloft like toys.
Berrigan freed my eyes and said:
‘Now turn round and take a look across
The pond, there where the mist is thickest.’
And as my eyes once more adjusted to
The light, I saw the figures
In the mud swim for all they were worth,
As frogs will flee a lawnmower,
To get out of the way of a jet-ski
Which tore across the swelling waters
Scything off ears and toes as it went
Carrying a man who must be the head porter.
I turned round to speak to Ted
But he made me a secret sign
Telling me straight away to zip the lip
In the presence of this man from security.
Oh, what scorn poured forth from his lips,
Aimed at the surly students,
As he reached the heavy gates
To the burning tower, pulled out his keys,
And opened them without resistance.
‘You bunch of utter wankers!
How dare you piss about like this
And get me out at this time of the night.
Any more trouble like this
And the lot of you will face disciplinary action.
And turn that fucking noise down while you’re at it!’
He turned round then and rode back,
Across the squalid swan’s road,
Answering a call on his mobile,
And on his furrowed brow you could see
The look of one with different worries
That were not those he found surrounding him.
We entered the tower without opposition,
And I, anxious to investigate the
Students who lodged in such a fortress,
cast my eyes about,
And saw in every direction
A dwelling of desolation and abjection.
As at Arles, where the Rhone stagnates,
Or as at St Mary’s in Colchester,
Where the lids of the sepulchres
Are broken
and cast about,
So the rooms here were in a mess,
And burning all about were fierce flames
Which kept the rooms far hotter
Than any summer barbecue.
Each room had its fire-door loose, torn off
at the hinges,
And from within came fierce laments.
‘Master,’ I asked, ‘what souls are these who,
Stuck in these stinking digs,
Make themselves known by their powerful sighs?’
And Berrigan replied: ‘Here lie wasters,
Addicts, gluttons and party-goers,
A lazy bunch who rarely leave their rooms
Except to get a fix or pick a fight.
All sorts are crammed in here,
Left to cook like baked potatoes.’
Then, after turning at the top of the stairs,
We passed a kitchen
bellowing acrid smoke,
And continued our ascent.
CANTO X
Now by a narrow stairwell
Between the lift-shaft and the outer wall
My master went on, and I behind.
‘Dear Berrigan,’ I said, ‘trusted guide,
Who leads me through these smoking squats,
Tell me, will we get a chance to see
The souls who lie within these rooms?
The doors are off,
and nobody’s standing guard.’
To which Berrigan: ‘You should bear in mind
The lesson which helped you get out of
Belfast alive: “Let sleeping dogs lie.”’
At Berrigan’s words, a man wearing
The bloodied apron of a butcher,
Who at first I mistook for a student
In fancy d
ress, poked his reddened
Face out of a smoking doorway,
And eyed us up and down with a look of
Astonishment. ‘What are you doing here,’
He said, ‘a living soul patrolling the corridors
Of the dead? And did I hear you mention
Belfast, that strife-torn city, which once
I called home?’ With a gentle push
Berrigan encouraged me to move forwards
Towards the door: ‘Choose your words with care,’
He whispered. ‘Tell me,’ I said,
‘For I too hail from that self-same city,
Though my accent has faded with time,
Forced into exile as I was
Still in the flush of youth,
What part did you play in the troubled
Past of that bloody city?’ At that
He pulled himself up with pride
Smoothing his apron down with his hands,
And spoke: ‘Young man, let me tell you,
I ran a salutary business in the
Pork trade, and I pride myself to this day
That it was my pork sausages,
Not an inferior variety, like those
Supplied by Walls or Colin Glenn,
That fed the paras and the RUC,
Not to mention the students of this establishment,
Till the dirty Fenians took revenge,
Burning down all my slaughterhouses
Till in the end I was almost glad of the day
They showed up at my door dressed in
Balaclavas, carrying their sawn-off shotguns
Like the cowards they were, and blew my face off.’
By the time he had finished speaking
I had reached the threshold of his room.
He looked me in the eye and asked,
Half-contemptuously: ‘And who would your ancestors be?’
And I, who wanted only to oblige him,
Held nothing back, but told him freely
All he might wish to know. At which
He raised his brows a little, then said:
‘Your family, then, must have been the owners of
That damned dog that roamed
The streets like a vagabond, and never let off
Pestering my bitches when they were in heat.
Not once, but twice, I dragged him back
To your house by the scruff of his neck,
Swearing if he ever showed his face again
I’d make him into sausage meat!’
Just then, round the same door’s battered frame,
A shadow arose, visible to the chin;
It raised itself upon its knees
And looked about as if it hoped to see
Whether someone else was accompanying me,
And when its expectation was quenched
It stuttered, weeping: ‘If it be genius
That gives you the right to freely roam
This blind prison, where is my boy,
Whose scholarship in US Studies
Is second to none, and why
Is he not by your side?’ ‘I’m not alone,’
I said, ‘that man who waits over there
Guides me through this stinking cauldron,
A poet, perhaps, your Owen held in scorn?’
(His face, and the question he posed, revealed his name
To me, and made my pointed answer possible.)
At once, he sprang up to his full height and cried:
‘What did you say? He held? Is he not living then?’
And when he heard the silence
of my delay
In responding to his question, he fell back
Into his room, not to be seen again.
The other shade, who’d been talking before,
Showed no concern at all, but turned to me,
Picking up where he’d left off:
‘Tell me, for you might know the answer,
Why did Essex cancel its contracts with me
In the 1970s? What was wrong with my bangers?’
‘I’m sure there was nothing wrong with them,”
I said, ‘but the students of that day
Were mostly hippies, vegetarians who stuck
Two fingers up at the meat industry;
They were the generation that picketed
The livestock exports from Brightlingsea:
Butchery was out of fashion.’ ‘Unjust! Unjust!’
He cried, ‘A bunch of pot-smoking good-for-nothings!
Let me tell you now, for the record,
Is one whose years are numbered;
Before the passage of fifty moons
It will have died out completely;
And in days to come the fur trade too
Will make a healthy comeback:
Not far off lies the day when coats
Of mink and fox fur, badger, bear,
And even Dalmatian will again be worn with pride!’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ I said,
‘But tell me, can you answer a question
That’s been bugging me:
If I understand correctly, all of you
Can see ahead to what the future holds,
But your knowledge of the present is shaky.’
‘Here we see like those with an eye defect,’
He said, ‘what’s in the distance we see
Clearly, with 20/20 vision,
But when an object is up close
It’s all a blur; without gossip
We’d know nothing of your living state.’
Then, moved by regret for what I’d done
I said: ‘Will you tell your room-mate
His son is still among the living,
And if, when he asked, I held my silence,
Let him know that as he spoke all my thought
Was taken up with that point you’ve explained.’
Berrigan had begun to call me back,
So quickly I asked the shade to tell me
What other souls were cooking in this tower.
He said: ‘More than a thousand souls lie here
With me, among them some of the Angry Brigade,
One of them’s another poet
Wrongly imprisoned in life,
Who now spends her days imprisoned here,
Anna Mendelssohn, also known as Grace,
Of the rest I speak not.’ Then he was gone,
And I turned back towards Berrigan,
Thinking on what this man had said about the fur trade.
We moved on, and as we went, Berrigan asked:
‘What’s bugging you now? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’
And I satisfied him in his question.
‘Look,’ he said firmly, ‘what these people say needs
To be taken with a pinch of salt.’
Then he turned to the left, up a stairway,
And we were nearly knocked out by a fearful stink.
CANTO XI
‘That smell,’ said Berrigan, ‘comes from the bins
Which lie below, full of uneaten food and
Stinking rubbish – the bad news is that
It gets worse the closer you get to it,
And we’re heading that way.’ Before I had
A chance to protest, Berrigan had summoned
The lift which took us down in seconds,
Then we proceeded a little way on foot.
The place we came to was the edge of a steep bank
Composed of broken concrete, mud and steel,
And here the stench was so powerful
We had to step back from the precipice.
Not far from where we stood, Berrigan
Drew my attention to a giant skip
Awaiting collection. On stepping closer,
I saw it was labelled DISSERTATIONS.
Berrigan noticed the look of shock on my face,
And tried to reassure me: ‘Not all
Dissertations suffer this ignoble fate,’
He said, ‘these are the ones that didn’t toe the
Line, students who used Freud with Jungians,
Others who used Derrida with Lacanians.
The rest are stored in the library.
Until our noses get used to the stink
We’d better shelter behind this skip,
Once we’ve been here a bit you’ll hardly notice it.’
‘Is there something we can do to pass the time?’
I asked. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Berrigan, ‘I’ve
Thought of that.’ He began to roll a huge joint,
And as he did so, he said: ‘Beneath these rocks
Lie many more souls packed in; and since later
The sight of them will be enough, I’ll tell you a
Little about them.’ ‘While you’re at it,’ I added,
‘Could you also explain the layout of the campus?
At times I find it hard to fathom.’
‘That’s a tough ask,’ he said, ‘but I’ll do my best.