Dante's Inferno
Page 7
And Berrigan replied: ‘My companion’s
Been there more recently than I have,
He should be able to give you the low-down.’
At once I turned red with embarrassment.
If ever I regretted telling a lie
This was the moment.
Berrigan had asked me if
I’d ever been to the US, and ashamed
To admit I hadn’t, I’d said,
er,
I recently went to New York.
Now my fib was coming back to haunt me
And I was going to have to bullshit my way out.
‘Well,’ I began, all of them hanging on
My every word, ‘I don’t know the city very well,
To tell the truth,
I’ve only been there for
a long weekend,
But from what I hear people are a little
Bit jumpy since 9/11. And
The village isn’t what it used to be,
I’m told, it’s been taken over by
People in marketing and the media,
The new bourgeoisie,
And the artists have been priced out.’
I blurted out the words without thinking,
My mouth moving without my brain engaged,
As one does when asked a question at a conference.
‘Oh my God,’ said Brainard, ‘it’s just like David says.
If you always answer questions this easily,
Poet, then you’re a happy man!
Now listen, if you manage to get out of this
Place alive, and return to gaze on the
Beauteous stars, see that you speak of us to men.’
Then they broke up their wheel and fled across
The sand, and as they fled
Their nimble legs seemed like wings in flight.
When they were out of sight, Berrigan turned to
Depart, and I followed, close behind.
We had not gone very far along the track
Before our senses were overwhelmed with
The clanking of loud machinery,
As one hears outside the town of Carrara,
Or on the industrial estate at Harlow,
Yet as we advanced, now along a tarmac
Track, we soon found ourselves
Treading the rim of a vast and bottomless
Pit gouged into the earth
Without pity.
Here no trees grew, nor any scrub, and what remained
Of the earth was scorched and burned up;
Everywhere dust blew about
Whipped by a spiralling wind which
Rose from the depths of the pit.
Along the rim, a few houses still clung on,
Their gardens already devoured by the chasm.
When we had taken in our new surroundings,
Berrigan led me along a narrow spit of land
Flanked by the void on either side,
Which took us to a small island perched above
The hollow, where a few gravestones stood,
And the burning remains of a church.
I wore a bum-flap, clipped to my jeans,
Which I kept about me as a lucky charm,
And here Berrigan turned towards me
And asked me to unclip it; I did as
He suggested, then he hurled it out far into
The abyss, and winking: ‘It’s as I thought –
A punk and his bum-flap are soon parted,’
He said. ‘Now watch!’
It’s always better to hold one’s tongue
In circumstances where if you speak nobody’s
Going to believe you anyway, and I guess
That’s why Berrigan kept his silence now.
But that’s no reason for my poem to
Shut up too. Reader, I swear to you,
I saw this giant spectre, it was like
A colossal jellyfish, or an airship, swimming
Through the smoke-filled air from the depths
Of the pit – it held its arms out like tentacles.
CANTO XVII
‘Steady,’ said Berrigan, ‘don’t lose your nerve.
This creature which you behold swimming up
From the quarry pit, with its arms outstretched
In supplication, is no enemy, nor is
It an evil spirit – it’s the soul of
The trees which were desecrated to make
This eyesore, in the face of local opposition.
Even Swampy couldn’t have put a stop
To this development, so rapacious
Are the quarry company and their backers.
Here profit is the only good, and here
You see the results of that philosophy,
Which no scorched earth policy could match.’
These were the words I heard Berrigan speak
As he beckoned the creature to come ashore
Near the end of the rocky promontory.
The gentle creature, its eyes full of pain
And sorrow, came onward, landing its head
And trunk, but drew not its roots upon the bank.
Its face was like that of a mother who
Has lost all her children in some catastrophe
Yet it shone from inside with a glow of
Benediction; within its translucent head no
Brain matter, but the ghostly silhouettes of trees.
As at times fishing boats lie on the shore,
Moored part on water and part on land,
Or as the endangered beaver, once common
On the polluted banks of the Rhine
In the land of the rowdy bierkellers,
Squats to hide from its persecutors,
Just so this great creature lay upon the
Brim of that dusty and bottomless pit.
Berrigan said: ‘Let’s take a shortcut to
Where the king of limbs has landed.’
Then we made our way down on the right and
Took ten paces towards the edge
Careful to avoid the flames which were falling here.
When we came to the creature, I saw nearby,
Crouched in the burning ruin of the church,
People huddled close to the altar.
Here Berrigan said to me: ‘So you can
Get a complete picture of this Zone,
Go over and have a word with them,
But don’t hang around; meanwhile I’ll have a
Talk with our friend here, and see if we can
Borrow his strong shoulders.’ Leaving Berrigan
Behind, I sidled up to these woeful folk,
Sheltering under the narthex.
Their eyes appeared to be bursting with grief;
On this side and on that their hands were flapping
To ward off the flames and the burning flakes
Of sand which rained down on them without let-up.
They were like dogs in summer, plagued by
Fleas that bite them, attacking
Their itch now with snout, now with paw.
When I had examined the faces of
A few of these wretches on whom the flames fell
I couldn’t recognise anyone, so burned up
Were their features, but I noticed that each
Wore a singed baseball cap or a T-shirt,
On which I recognised some of the logos,
And these they seemed to wish to protect from
The flames at the expense of all else.
I saw the crest of a blue eagle, a
Black horse, four red triangles arranged to form
A hexagon, a blue and white globe and
A black key; then one who wore a sweatshirt
Stamped with a blue cross surrounded by four
Circles, said: ‘What are you doing in this pit?
Didn’t you see the KEEP OUT signs?
If you’re a protestor, you’re too late,
Get out of here! And seeing you’re still alive,
You can tell my friend Sir Fred Goodwin
That I have a pew reserved for him right here,
And another one for Peter Cummings,
A lot hotter than his villa on the
Costa del Sol!’ Then he made a face, thrusting
His tongue out like a bull that licks its nose.
Not wanting to try Ted’s patience, and he’d
Told me to be quick, I hurried back to his side,
Where I found him already saddled up
On the trunk of that great spectre, and he
Said to me: ‘I forgot to ask, how’s your
Horsemanship? You’ve read Castiglione,
Now’s the time to put your book-learning to the test!’
I climbed up beside him as one who
Reluctantly boards a scary ride at
The funfair, then, putting his arms about
Me, he said: ‘Tree spirit, now we’re ready,
Take it slowly, be mindful of the living weight
You carry.’ As a ferry goes from its mooring
Backwards, so this living airship moved,
And when it felt itself free from the ridge
There where its trunk had been it turned its roots
Which undulated like the tentacles of
An octopus, propelling us over the abyss.
I doubt if Phaethon feared more when he took
The reins of the chariot of the sun,
Scorching the earth as can still be seen today,
Or if Harry Potter was more afraid
The first time he mounted a broomstick
In a game of quidditch, than I was then
When I saw only air on all sides
And saw extinguished every sight
Save the broad back of the king of limbs.
He goes on, swimming slowly, rising up
Like a jumbo jet played back in slow motion,
Then wheels round, changing track,
But I only know this from the wind in my face.
From below, I hear the roar of machinery,
As it scythes into the earth, and at this
I stretch out my neck to look down,
But doing so only made me more apprehensive,
For beneath me I could see nothing but
A city of flames, full of fearful cries
And lamentings, and I drew back tightening
My grip. And then I saw what I had not
Been able to till then: the spiral path
Of our descent, like that of a jet coming in
To Stansted, that has to kill time before
The runway is clear, and as we went down
I saw torment heaped upon torment
Closing in on us from every side.
The tree spirit brought us down gently,
Before a building that resembled a
Multi-storey car park, and here we alighted.
Unburdened, the ghost shot off, like an arrow from a bowstring.
CANTO XVIII
Hell has a stricture called Al’s Bulge,
A block of
ferruginous-hued concrete;
At the gateway of this tottering
Pile is a huge chasm,
for unread books.
Abandoned by the tree spirit,
Berrigan walked
Straight in, me behind.
Packed into the dusty foyer,
New misery I see,
new hands on the whip:
Naked scholars
Stuck in two-way traffic,
Against us this side, with us that,
Like the ranks when Diana died,
As on one side they queued to sign,
On the other to escape the tide.
Here some queued to take out books,
Others to find them, crammed into
Paternosters, some going up, some down.
On both sides
Librarians in horn-rims
Flayed students fiercely,
Hell, how they made them bleed
In Freshers’
Week!
Struggling to move, my eyes lit on
One man; immediately I think
‘I recognise this one,’
And as I stop to make him out better,
Berrigan, my guide,
stops too.
The one with the weals tries to hide,
Lowering his swarthy face; but it’s no use,
‘Friend,’ I say,
‘Aren’t you he
who translated our Percy
Into the Conquistadors’ noble tongue?’
And he says, ‘I grudge telling you;
But your meaning forces me,
It brings me back to old tomes.
I was he who couldn’t get enough
Of the wives of friends;
Drawing the beef curtains,
As the smutty story says.
To cover my tracks
I kept
A hoover
in the trunk of my Rover;
Caught in flagrante
I’d dash out for
My equipment, make out I was
A rep.’
As he speaks
the Head Librarian,
A softly-spoken Scot,
hits him with a lash
saying, ‘Get going, you ogre!
Women aren’t meat here.’
In a few steps we reach
where the paternoster yawns
Below,
Letting the lashed
Go under, into the shit,
That seemed on tap from some sewer.
Rolling a joint, Berrigan points
Towards the
stairs,
‘See that haughty one,’ he says,
‘Like a goatherd down from the mountain,
Seeming to scorn any tears at pain?
He’s a dude whose skill with myth
Got him inside
many knickers.
He hitch-hiked to Lemnos once,
After the first-generation feminists
Had slaughtered their menfolk.
Here his gilded tongue
Tricked Hypsipyle, a young poetess,
And he left her all alone, pregnant.
And over there a little,
clawing off the shit,
The one in heels
With the pink leather suit
and all the lipstick,
Look closely at that woman’s face,
Under the stinking make-up,
that’s our Professor Emerita,
A hard-nosed Lacanian,
whether she’s
written more books
Or screwed more dons
Is a tough call.’
CANTO XIX
David Willetts, you wanker, and your shit-brained
Followers, pick-pockets in silk suits,
Who play the pimp with HE,
Which should be a right,
and free;
Can you imagine being told, age 25,
That you’d got cerebral palsy and the
Treatment would cost you an arm and a leg –
But it’s OK, you can defer payment,
Spread it over 20 years, no cause for alarm…
Don’t you ever stop
to think?
Now, in your honour, let the fire-alarm sound,
For it’s here, in Al’s Bulge,
‘The Pits’, as the students call it,
That you and your kind hang out.
Already, we had stopped, to spit on his statue,
When we began to make our way
Up a wide granite stairway.
On the side wall, as we climbed,
I noticed what at first I took for
Some weird art installation,
Something from the Latin American Collection:
Here a series of round holes were
Punched into livid rock. The
y looked
About as wide and as deep as a manhole,
And from the mouth of each a pair of feet
Stuck out, and legs up to the knee,
And these were twitching frenziedly, as if
Dancing to electropop, like a robot
From 1984, while on the soles of
The feet a flame too danced, as
Lit brandy on a Christmas pudding.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Berrigan,
‘But this is no surrealist montage,
The feet you see sticking out of the wall
Belong to the vice-chancellors
Of the university, the rest of their bodies
Are stuffed inside.’
‘Who’s that one,’ I asked, ‘the one
Who’s really going for it
up ahead?’
‘If you really want to know, why don’t
You ask him yourself?’ said Berrigan.
‘He can talk.’ When we reached the eighth
Or the ninth step, where the stairs begin to turn
To the left, we came up close to the cleft.