by Philip Terry
‘Now grab hold of this ridge, but test it first
To see if it will take your weight.’
This was no road for gilded cloaks,
For though I had Berrigan to guide me,
And he had the weight of a shade,
We struggled to mount from crag to crag
Without crampons or hexes.
When we came to the point where the last stone
Breaks off, I was so sweaty and puffed out
That I couldn’t take a step more.
Yet no sooner had I sat down
Than Berrigan began to take the piss:
‘Get up off your backside, academic,’ he said.
‘I’m a fifty-year-old man,’ I replied,
‘What you going to do about it?’
‘Nobody,’ he said, ‘ever won fame that way.’
And at that he gave me his hand and yanked
Me to my feet; I stretched and puffed my chest out,
Trying to look as if I was up for it,
Then we took off with heavy steps towards
A large building that shone brightly in the
Darkness, traversing a narrow bridge.
As we went I made an effort to speak
So as not to seem faint, whereat a voice
Rose up from the pit beneath the bridge,
Though what it said I couldn’t make out,
It was like the voice of a man running at speed.
I peered over the side of the bridge
But saw nothing in the gloom, so I said:
‘Master, why don’t we slip round the end there,
where the grass is worn away, and look into the pit?’
‘Nice idea,’ he said, ‘lead on.’
From the centre of the bridge, we came to
The point where it ends and joins a steep bank,
And from this vantage point the pit opened up
To me: down there I saw a terrifying confusion
Of literary agents, all wearing name tags,
Double-barrelled, triple-barrelled, quadruple-
Barrelled, all of such a monstrous girth
Even now the thought of them makes my blood run cold.
Let the Libyan desert boast no more, for
Though it engenders chelydri and jaculi,
Phareans, cenchres and double-headed amphisbenes,
It never spawned so great a plague of venom,
Not even if you added the whole of Egypt
And all the lands of the Arab spring.
Amidst this cruel power-dressing swarm
Were authors running, naked and shit-scared,
Without hope of pied-à-terre or invisibility cloak.
They had their hands tied behind their backs with contracts,
And their loins were all disfigured and bloated
With the size of their advances.
Just then, an author ran straight past us –
An agent shot out and clamped her teeth there
Where the neck is bound upon the shoulders.
No Mills and Boon was ever written so
Quickly as he took fire, burned up,
And collapsed into a heap of ashes,
Which fell like leaves onto a carpet of
Unsolicited manuscripts, where some of the
Best work of its time lay rotting and neglected.
After he had been incinerated like this,
The ash particles reunited themselves
And he resumed his former shape
(Just so, as J.K. Rowling informs us,
The phoenix dies and then is born again
When it approaches its five-hundredth year).
As a man suffering a stroke or a heart
Attack will fall, and knows not why
(Perhaps high blood pressure, stress, cigarettes,
Or a failed marriage, drags him down, or some
Impure line of coke chokes his vital spirits),
Then, scrambling to his feet, will look around
All bewildered by the great anguish he
Has undergone, such was this author when he rose.
Berrigan asked who he was and he answered:
‘It’s not that long ago, though God it seems it,
That I rained down from Hull into this fierce gullet.
I loved the bachelor pad more than human
Intercourse, preferred to stay at home with
A packet of fags and a bottle of whisky
Than spend an evening down the pub
Exchanging polite chat, preferred a
Magazine to a real woman –
Less trouble at the end of the day.’
I said to Berrigan: ‘Tell him not to budge,
My mother once worked with him in the
Library at Queen’s, ask him what he’s doing here.’
But the poet heard very well what I said,
And didn’t try to hide it; he turned towards me,
Coughed, and with a look of guilt, said:
‘That you have caught me by surprise in this
Wretched pit pains me more than the day
I kicked the bucket, for that’s something you can’t help.
But I’ll answer what you ask: I’m stuck in this
Hell-hole for stealing a library book when I
Was at Oxford – largely so Amis couldn’t
Get his hands on it. There – not even Motion
Knows about that. Some might say I’m here
Because I narrowed the scope of poetry,
But that’s poppycock. I don’t want you to
Rejoice over the fact you bumped into me
In this pit if you ever get out of here
Alive, so prick up your ears and drink in
My prophecy: The Arts Council will strip
Poetry publishers of all their miserable
Grants, and the one who publishes your books
Will be the first to go under. After that
There’ll be no room in the market for
Anything more elevated than Pam Ayres!’
CANTO XXV
When he had finished delivering his speech,
Larkin stuck his two fingers up at us,
Shouting: ‘This be the prophecy!’
And now the agents became my friends, for one
Of them, a blonde, coiled herself round his neck
And started tonguing him, which shut him up for good,
While another, a brunette, coming from the front,
Entwined him in her arms so that
He could barely move a muscle.
Coventry, you crappest of crap towns,
Wasn’t it enough to give us Philip Larkin?
Did you really have to follow that star turn
With Paul Connew and Hazel O’Connor,
King, Dennis Spicer and Pete Waterman?
Will you not be content till you have ruined
Every art form? Losing his balance under
The attention of the agents, Larkin collapsed.
‘Berrigan,’ I said, ‘tell me something about
The shades in this pit, what brings them together?’
‘This pit,’ explained Berrigan, ‘contains thieves,
As Larkin said – but the worst crimes you’ll see
Punished here are crimes against literature,
That’s why the agents are here, as well as
Larkin, and some other Movement poets.
Just as literary agents, in their pursuit
Of an ever-wider readership, and ever
Increasing sales, reduce all writing to a
Commodity, and a formula, so Movement
Writers reduce all poetry to the
Formulaic: journey, minor epiphany, return.
So it’s fitting the two groups come together here:
The writers have their identities robbed by agents,
But the agents are made to suffer in their turn,
As these Movement poets are the ones
who never move.’
Just then a cleaner darted past, shouting:
‘Where’s he gone to, that bald librarian?
I found some more mags in his room, hidden
Under the Auden.’ Not even the Hôtel de Nesle
Had as many cockroaches as she had on her back,
There was a giant one crouched on her shoulders,
Just behind the neck, with its wings outstretched,
That seemed poised to take a bite out of her.
Berrigan said to me: ‘That one’s Dolores,
She’s down here rather than with her mates
Because of all the stuff she stole from the
Store cupboard, mostly wine and Rancheros.’
As he was talking the cleaner passed out of sight,
Then right under our noses three shades appeared
Which neither of us would have noticed,
If they hadn’t cried out: ‘Who are you?’
I couldn’t recognise any of them,
But it happened, as it sometimes does by chance,
That one of them addressed another:
‘Where did your friend go, Thwaity?’
And then, to stop Berrigan from opening
His mouth, I put my finger to my lips,
Hoping they might say more.
Reader, if you’re reluctant to believe
What I’m about to tell you, that’s no surprise:
I hardly credit it myself, and I was there.
I was still looking at them when a black
Triple-barrelled agent, a New Yorker with a
Six-figure contract, darted up in front of
One of them and fastened herself upon him.
With the middle finger of one hand she teased
The author’s locks, with the other she grabbed
His neck and kissed him on both cheeks.
She then spread her legs and rubbed herself
Against the author’s thighs, stuffing the
Contract between his legs. Ivy was never
Rooted to a tree as round the author’s limbs
The agent entwined her own;
Then they stuck together, as if they had been
Heat-bonded, mingling their colours,
So that neither seemed what they had been at first,
Just as a brown tint, ahead of the flame,
Will advance across the white pages
Of a pile of burning manuscripts.
The other two looked on and each cried:
‘Oh dear, Andrew! If you could only see how you’re
Changing, you don’t look yourself!’
The two heads, already large, merged into
One gigantic one, and the features of each
Face combined together till neither was recognisable,
Rather they looked like a face made in a potato.
The four arms grew together to make two,
Then the thighs, bellies, chests and feet
Mixed together to sprout such members as were
Never seen before in hospital or freak show
Or photographs by Diane Arbus.
The former shape was all extinct in them:
Both and neither the perverse image seemed,
And such it limped away with slow step.
Just then, at the speed of a darting lizard,
Another agent, she was short with fiery hair
And a fuck-off belt, came charging towards
The two remaining authors. She shot up
And sank her teeth into one of them,
Right on middle stump, then fell down,
Stretched out before him, only to jump up at once,
Offering him a Balkan Sobranie.
They both began to smoke languidly,
Staring at each other, the author seemingly
Lost for words, blowing smoke into each
Other’s faces, their feet motionless.
Let Marie Darrieussecq from now on be silent
With her stories about changing into a pig,
And Ovid too can shut up about Cadmus
And Arethusa – he may have changed one
Into a snake and the other into a fountain,
But does my face look bothered?
He never transformed two creatures standing
Face to face so that each took on the features
Of the other: a change of perfect symmetry.
The agent split her tongue into a fork,
While the author drew his legs together,
As if he were standing to attention to receive
The Presidential Medal of Freedom;
His legs and thighs along with them so stuck
To each other that the join became invisible,
While the cloven tongue swelled out growing feet
Which hardened at their extremities to form toes.
Now the legs drew back into the body softening
And growing furry, as they took on the features
The agent had shed, while her pubis
Thrust out to make the member old men piss through.
The smoke from each was now swirling round the
Other, exchanging shape and complexion,
Hair growing on one who had none before,
The other balding before my very eyes,
The one’s pale flat chest filling out with young breasts,
The other’s youth collapsing into withered age.
The one rose up, the other sank, but neither
Let up staring right back at the other,
Fixed eye to eye as they swapped faces.
When the smoke had cleared I saw the one transformed
Into the body of the author shuffle off
As if in a pair of slippers, muttering:
‘Let Conquest now creep about at
Literary lunches on all fours
as I had to do.’
Just so I saw the cargo of the pit of thieves
Change and exchange form, and if my pen lets me down,
May the strangeness of it all excuse me.
But though my eyes could scarcely believe what they saw,
And my mind was sore perplexed,
I could still see clearly enough to notice
The one of the three who stood there alone
And was not changed, and if I am not
Mistaken, now I think on it, it bore a
Striking resemblance to Blake Morrison.
CANTO XXVI
Rejoice, Oxford, since you are so powerful
That over sea and fen you beat your wings,
And your name spreads through Hell itself.
I was shocked to find amongst the thieves,
Where those condemned for crimes against literature
Dwell, three of your alumni, a circumstance
That does you little credit.
Not content with taking over parliament
Now you wish to police literature with your
Agents and keep it safe with your unmagnanimous
Authors and their self-important posturings.
But literature is no coterie,
And if history is anything to go by,
Laureates
do not last.
We quit the pit of thieves,
Zone 8 Area G, making our way
Up some scree down which we had come.
To climb back up we had to get down
On our hands and knees, pursuing our
Solitary way, for here foot without hand sped not.
Once at the top, we took a shortcut up some stairs,
And came via a devious route, past some ducks
Hunkered down in a muddy tyre track,
As in a poem by Thomas Hardy,
To the LTB, where many lost souls
Stood about conversing and smoking.
It filled me with grief, and fills me with grief
Again now, when I think back on what I saw,
And as I write I know I must n
ot indulge
My pen, but tell it straight, as it is,
For if some bit of luck, or something better,
Has gifted me this good, I don’t want to abuse it.
As headline acts (in the season when rock
Festivals fill the farmers’ fields with litter,
And shepherds take their annual leave)
Look out into the gathering darkness
To see the flickering of lighters
Held aloft, with flames just as numerous
The chasm of Zone 8 Area H was lit up.
I was standing by the bridge, on the long
Tiled seating area, leaning over
The opaque glass screen, so far over that
If Berrigan had not held my legs I might
Have toppled below. At first I thought there
Was some chemistry experiment going
On outdoors, perhaps involving explosives,
Until I remembered chemistry had been shut down.
Berrigan, reading my thoughts, was quick to
Put me right: ‘Those are no Bunsen burners,’
He said, ‘within these moving flames are souls,
And each is burned by its own conscience.’
