They’ve noticed, seem increasingly to shy
Away when some chance conversation tends
Toward topics that might prompt the question why
Their work’s not featured anywhere among
The departmental listings, or—to try
Their patience further—why slips of the tongue,
Like “Prof. Emeritus,” so often turn
Up just when some research committee’s sprung
The kind of news they’re always last to learn,
Though always first to suffer from through cuts
In funding. Hence those motions to adjourn
Decision-making till the ifs and buts
Can be thrashed out by colleagues with a due
Sense of the risk that their department shuts
For want of room to move them up the queue,
Those bright young scholars fresh from Ph.D.’s
On the right topics and keen to pursue
Careers best suited to their expertise.
In short, the system’s jammed if all the roads
That lead to academe are blocked from these
Exemplary observers of the codes
And protocols by a large rump of old
Retainers hanging on in sheer busloads
Until kicked out, or dead, or firmly told
To step aside. Else they’re kept on in some
Near-sinecure that feels like they’re paroled,
Not as with those let out though told to come
Back punctually but those allowed to hang
Around on strict condition they’ll keep mum
And spare their colleagues all that Sturm und Drang
Self-pitying stuff when finally it’s time
For new blood to invigorate the gang
While they bow out content with the sublime
Self-abnegating ruse of saying they’ve
Been hoping all along the thing would chime
With their plans for retirement. Yet to stave
It off like that, the death-watch count that starts
With gifts and talk of service that they gave
For such long years, may very well touch hearts,
Their own included, for a while but soon
Gives way to the hard lesson it imparts
That their departure’s nothing but a boon
To those well-wishers. And it turns out just
The same with everything they’d thought immune
To time’s long-term revenges, from the trust
They’d placed in higher learning to the worth
Of some few books and articles that must,
They’d thought, do something to make up the dearth
Of other things by which—since it’s the sort
Of wish we’re apt to have—their stay on earth
Should stay in mind. Thus people might report.
How their old colleague, now retired, had “left
This world a better place,” or not been short
Of kind words for the suffering or bereft,
Or—in their case a somewhat smaller stretch
Of counterfactual thinking—shown a deft
And tactful touch in knowing how to fetch
Up ego-soothing ways to heal a rift
Between old colleagues. But if that’s the sketch
They like to draw as summing up the drift
Of their own Times obituary this fond
Self-image proves apt to get shorter shrift
With each hard knock against the world beyond
Their donnish fantasy. For now it’s past
Reviving like some far-back autre monde,
That time when colleges retained a cast
Of amiable eccentrics whose chief claim
To any good repute that might outlast
Their tenure or afford them local fame
Was down to such remembrance plus a bunch
Of minor publications to their name
If so desired. But then there came the crunch,
The new Gleichschaltung under which regime
The old dissenters were ruled out to lunch
And those with all the power in academe,
Mid-managers and up, took special pains
To stress how everybody on the team
Must show not merely that they had the brains
But that they’d seen right through the old pretence
Which says: there’s only one thing that explains
How genius outperforms intelligence
And that’s (as Pope described it) something “sure
To madness near allied” where plain-prose sense
Recedes from view. A self-applied quick cure
For such ideas is what the times require
And what best helps the new lot reassure
Their research-managers that they aspire
No higher than to make that mid-life switch
To management themselves, and then retire
After a smooth career-path without hitch
Since perfectly adjusted to the need
That all who take it be prepared to ditch
Such rogue ambitions. These were what decreed
They strive above all else to leave a mark
Of individual genius or succeed
In making sure theirs is the only spark
Of intellectual brilliance that shines out
As one fixed beacon in the deepest dark
Whose signal power such individuals tout
Against the heaviest odds. If these are stacked
Too high to leave the outcome in much doubt
Then put it down to the implicit pact
Between those fixers of a fine new deal
For management and all the shifts it tracked
In public mood, like how the old appeal
Of ‘eccentricity’ and all those tales
Of absent-minded profs have come to feel
Distasteful now that everybody quails
Before the prospect of their own last years,
Or how it goes as each last system fails
And there’s no way to calm the mounting fears
With Einstein-anecdotes that used to hike
The spirits but now seem a myth that cheers
Only the credulous. Yet, lest it strike
The mind-administrators as a piece
Of crass pop-science conjured up to spike
Their bureaucratic guns or mere caprice
Of tenured scatter-wits, let this thought cross
Their own much tidier minds: should that lot cease
Their errant ways then how compute the loss?
A WORD CHILD
Certain cerebrovascular disasters are called “insults to the brain”…the more prodigious the brain, the more studious (and in this case protracted) the insult. Iris’s brain was indeed prodigious.
Soon, “the most intelligent woman in England” (Bayley’s plausible evaluation) is watching the Teletubbies with a look of awed concentration on her face.
—Martin Amis, The Guardian, December 21, 2001
CBeebies helps; the Teletubbies tell
Nice stories with no need for stuff about
Despair, life-crises, Angst, ideas that “hell
Is other people,” existential doubt,
Or authenticity. Time was, she’d dwell,
She and her characters, on ways to tout
Love-interests of the sort that went down well
With readers chiefly keen to figure out
What latest crise de conscience might compel
Some new twist in the story-line or bout
Of agonised soul-searching. Now the spell
Cast on her by this glossolalic rout
Of tiddler-tv dummies works to quell
Her rare face-clouding intervals of doubt
When voices from beyond the painted shell
Of wonder-land might just be heard to shout
The curse that once resounded
from the bell
In her most gothic novel, yet without
Its old power to appal. For now they fell
From far off on the ears of one devout
No longer in response to its dark knell
But to how Laa-Laa, Po and Dipsy flout
All rules of sense by which their clientele
Of infant viewers might be caused to pout.
A FAMILY BUSINESS
“A Family Business” has to do with Margaret Thatcher’s chapel-going childhood, her small-town petty-bourgeois social background, her rise to power, her domestic and foreign policies, and above all the massive and enduring effects of her period in office. The poem will I think be fairly uncontroversial in reflecting on her father’s likely influence but perhaps more of a red rag to various bulls in what it says about the tenacity, psychological depth, and morally damaging character of that influence. There are moments of comparative light relief but the piece is basically an exercise in Juvenalian saeva indignatio, or the sort of satire that takes no hostages and which extends no tolerant ironic allowances for human frailty or untoward circumstance. In fact there are passages where the indignatio almost overwhelms the satire and, as tends to happen with such writing, the poetry takes on a decidedly angry—though I hope not abrasive—tone.
Three pews back on the right she sits, devout
And hanging on each word the preacher aims
At those few souls elect who know about
Shop-keeping and the providential claims
Of shrewd accountancy along with that
Fine double-entry scheme of things that frames
Their godly warrant for arriving at
New ways to optimise the current state
Of family fortunes. This they’ve got off pat
Through years of diligence to correlate
Their Christian faith with what attracts the most
Lucrative custom at the lowest rate
Of overheads or taxes one could boast
About in decent company and not
Raise pious eyebrows. There she sits, engrossed,
As he (her father) tells them how they’ve got
To lay up worldly goods as well as store
Up blessings that would pay out on the dot
At that great day of reckoning when the more
Astute among them who’d resolved to look
Out for themselves and theirs would surely score
Top marks in God’s panoptic ledger-book
Of souls redeemed. Not so that other bunch
Whose talk of social conscience showed they took
The gospel texts to preach some out-to-lunch,
Most likely socialist idea of how
To save us from the moral credit-crunch
That came of living for the here-and-now
Of private greed. On this he reassured
His restive congregation: they allow,
Indeed demand, a gloss for readers cured
Of such delusive notions and aware
That what most efficaciously ensured
The soul’s deliverance from its mortal share
Of sinfulness was not the vain desire
To give up, Lear-like, all the goods in their
Hard-won possession. Let them heed the prior
Since commerce-tested maxim that the way
To true salvation might instead require
That one give up those hopelessly passé
Ideas of soul-salvation that decreed
An end to acquisition and convey,
Rather, the soul’s as well as body’s need
For laying in enough to see them through
Hard times ahead. Then maybe they’d succeed
(The alderman admonished) and undo
The ill effects of that false message spread
By liberals and social-hopers who
Believed the task of giving daily bread
To those in need of it was higher on
The to-do list than seeking to embed
The fear of God in human hearts far gone
In wickedness. His daughter ponders this
And other points in his distinctly non-
PC approach that some might take amiss
Though just the cure (she thinks) for that malaise
Of faith misplaced that looks for future bliss
In some fine programme for a higher phase
Of ethical advancement when the whole
Existing scheme will enter its last days
And then emerge transformed. She sees her role
Already as the messenger who’ll bear
His tidings from that chapel where the sole
Mark of success was rousing folk to prayer
And make of it a doctrine that would cause
Even old socialists, caught unaware
By her new gospel-truth, to doubt the laws
Of progress. These (they took it) should consist
In keeping their utopias on pause,
Projecting justice as a long-term tryst
With history, and—when medium-term defeats
Piled up—recalling all the chances missed
As evidence of how the world mistreats
Those visionary few who’d prove at last
The ones who got it right. In the mean streets
Of Grantham, Lincs, the Zeitgeist stands aghast
As those beliefs that once maintained a bond
Between politicos of every cast
From centre-left to centre-right, beyond
Mere party politics, are felt to lose
All pertinence and so at length respond
By self-destructing as the parties choose
Their lesser evil or, more often, opt
For some malign amalgam that would fuse
The worst of every world. Why had they stopped,
She wondered, those old Tories she despised,
Short of the perfect answer: to adopt
The techniques he’d successfully devised,
Her preacher-patriarch, to keep his flock
Of listeners so routinely unsurprised,
Like her, by such hard sayings as would shock
Those with more tender consciences, upset
The ‘Socialists for Jesus’ lot, or knock
A hole in all things shored against the threat
Of old Jehovah. These might take the form
Of biblical remonstrance or be let
Loose like a kind of Benjaminian storm
From paradise that left its mounting pile
Of debris and propelled the shambling swarm
Of progress-touters forward all the while
Toward the same catastrophe whose dread
Event he’d conjured up. His graphic style
Left little doubt of how it should be read
By God’s elect as yet another sign,
If such were needed, that the daily bread
The Lord’s Prayer spoke of, like the loaves and wine
Of Canaan, figured forth the moral good
Of gainful trade. Let no-one then repine,
He cautioned, if the texts thus understood
Seemed lacking in those qualities that earned
The praise of social-gospellers who could,
By cunning tweaks, convince us they discerned
In scripture Christ’s intention to inspire
His followers, then and now, with lessons learned
From proto-communism’s book, or fire
Their fervent souls with some perverse new take
On the old texts that reckoned all their dire
Apocalyptic prophecies would make,
If suitably construed, a fine device
To turn his message right around and shake
Its biblical foundations. So they’d splice,
Those heretics, a secularizing mode
Of exegesis with the kind of twice-
Born zeal for some redemptive twist that show
ed
Them destined from the outset to that fate
Decreed for all who falsified the code
Of scripture since they thought such change of state
Pertained to Caesar’s realm or the domain
Of social justice where we might create
Some ersatz heaven on earth. This he’d explain
By citing verse and chapter week by week
Until his exhortations filled her brain
With their bewildering mix of bible-speak
And his own trademark brand of Poujadiste
Small-town ressentiment that made him seek,
Each Sunday, some occult sign of the beast
Now slouching close. Or he’d find nearer home
Some new and shocking sign of how we’d ceased
To honour parents, dutifully comb
The Good Book for instruction, hold in awe
The Ten Commandments, count the Church of Rome
Most grievously in breach of every law
Laid down for our salvation, and—his theme
In stressful times—acknowledge the deep flaw
In human nature. This should make it seem
Sheer hubris, so the lesson ran, to think
In terms of social progress or to deem
Us capable of virtues that would prink
Our defects out in any decent dress
For the Tempus-Fugitives Page 4
