Dante's Inferno

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.’