Dante's Inferno

by Philip Terry

  Lips or tongue, who hides at your side?’

  At that, he laid his fist on this one’s hair,

  Dragging him up for us to see, and cried:

  ‘Here he is, and he is mute.

  This civil servant stood at Thatcher’s arm

  And drowned her doubts: he swore that men who

  Are prepared to fast should be prepared to die.’

  How helpless and confused he looked,

  His tongue lopped off as far down as the throat,

  This curio who once spoke with such assurance.

  Then one who had both arms, but no hands,

  And no ears,

  raised his stumps in the air

  And cried: ‘No doubt you remember

  Michael McKevitt, who refused to

  Give up the bloody struggle, and took

  It to the streets of Omagh!’

  ‘A botched job,’ I replied, ‘which spelled

  The end of you and your thugs.’

  And he, this fresh wound added to the others,

  Went off like one gone mad from pain.

  But I remained, to watch the crowd,

  And saw a sight I could hardly credit,

  A body with no head that shuffled along,

  Moving no different from the rest.

  He held his severed head up by its hair,

  Wielding it like a lamp,

  And as it opened its eyes it spoke:

  ‘See my despair!’ When he arrived

  Below the bridge on which we trod,

  Halfway to the Data Archive,

  He held the head up high, to let it

  Speak from nearer by. ‘Examine

  Close my monstrous punishment,

  And see if you find suffering to equal

  Mine. I am Oliver Cromwell, who

  Showed the Irish my hard steel,

  And severed the head of King Charles.

  For this I carry my own head

  Forever cut from its life-source.

  In me you see the punishment fit the crime.’

  CANTO XXIX

  The many souls and their crippling mutilations

  Had made my eyes so drunk with horror

  That they longed only to stay, and weep,

  But Berrigan said: ‘What are you gawping at?

  Are you going to stand there all day ogling

  These wretched mutilated shadows?

  You weren’t like this in the other Zones.

  Now hold on, if you want to count them, one by one,

  Remember, the Essex coastline

  Is 350 miles long.

  We haven’t got that much time to play with,

  And you’ve still got plenty to see.

  ‘If you knew the reason I was sticking around,’

  I said, ‘then maybe you’d understand,

  And let me stay a little longer.’

  But already Berrigan was making tracks.

  I followed close behind him, trying to

  Get him to listen: ‘Look,’ I said,

  ‘In that pit where I kept my eyes so fixed,

  There’s a dear shade belonging to my own family,

  Who was stabbed in the chest by a shithead dealer.’

  Then Berrigan spoke: ‘There’s no point dwelling

  On past wrongs, what’s done is done.

  I saw the one you speak of, he was standing

  Beneath the bridge, dressed in sportswear,

  With blood all over his chest, and seemed to

  Beckon you, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father.

  I even heard the other shades calling him:

  Finn Western Davey – but you were staring at

  Cromwell all the while, and he went off.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ I said, ‘his violent death, aged 23,

  Which is still fresh, has yet to be atoned for,

  The shits who were involved got off lightly,

  And are unrepentant. I guess that’s why

  He went off without addressing me,

  And that only makes my sorrow the more.’

  We chatted on about this until we reached

  The other end of the bridge, by the Data Archive,

  Digital double of Al’s Bulge,

  And its last outpost,

  From where we saw into the final pit,

  And with more light could have seen to the bottom.

  Wild shrieks and lamentations pierced me,

  Like arrows whose tips had been barbed with pity,

  So that I put my hands over my ears.

  Imagine all the diseased in the hospitals

  Of Baghdad, Tripoli and Kaboul,

  Between the months of July and August,

  All flung together in one ditch;

  Such was the misery here; and the stench

  That came out was that of rotting flesh.

  We passed the bridge’s end to where a solitary

  Bench stood, at the top of a grassy bank,

  From which viewing point

  One could see quite clearly into the depths.

  I doubt the misery of the Indians

  Who died in their hundreds

  During the siege of Fort Pitt,

  When Trent gave the Delawares

  Two blankets and a handkerchief from the

  Pittsburgh smallpox hospital, as a gift,

  Was greater than the sorrow I beheld of the

  Souls languishing in heaps in that dim valley.

  One used a corpsed belly for a bolster,

  One lay with his head crushed into another’s

  Shoulder, while others crawled aimlessly

  Along the tarmac track. Step by step we went,

  Without speech, examining the sick

  Who could not raise their bodies.

  I saw two sit leaning against each other,

  Like book-ends in a library closed down by

  The cuts, covered from head to toe with scabs.

  I never saw a chisel applied by

  A porter, who has been called to

  Break into an office with a broken lock,

  Struck with more force than those two used,

  Clawing themselves with their bare nails

  To find release from the terrible itching.

  They worked their nails down under the scabs

  The way Keith Floyd used to wield a knife

  To de-scale a bream for a fish supper.

  ‘You there,’ began Berrigan, ‘scraping off

  Your mail shirts with your fingers’ ends,

  Like Edward Scissorhands,

  Tell us, are there any Americans

  Hanging about in this ditch?’

  ‘We’re Americans,’ one of them spoke back,

  Through eyes that wept salt tears.

  ‘But who the Hell are you, walking tall

  Amongst these dudes you see disfigured here?’

  And Berrigan replied: ‘I’m a shade, like you,

  Who, with this living man, goes from pit to pit,

  And I mean to show him all of Hell.’

  At that, they sat up straight, and turned

  To stare at us wide-eyed, and the heads

  Of many another in the ditch looked up too.

  Berrigan came up beside me and whispered

  In my ear: ‘Now it’s your turn to speak.’

  Then, since he wanted me to take over,

  I said: ‘Tell us who you are, and where

  You’re from, so that your stories may

  Live on in the world you have left behind.’

  ‘I’m from Kansas,’ one of them replied,

  ‘I got blown out of the air by friendly fire

  Patrolling the no-fly zone over Iraq.

  We were out on a mission,

  Flying above the cloud layer, high on

  Adrenaline, Napalm Death on the headphones;

  The two of us you see here

  Thought we might put the wind up our

  Squadron leader, we were just
goofing around,

  Like we were in Top Gun; so, we dived on him,

  Like we would if we were hostile,

  Meaning to pull off at the last minute,

  And I guess we kind of left it a little

  Bit late, so he opens fire with two Exocets,

  Blows us right out of the skies, kppowww!’

  And I said to the poet: ‘They don’t come

  Dumber than the Americans. Even the

  Irish are no match for them.’

  ‘Watch your lip, dude, or I might just crawl out

  Of this ditch,’ the other one snapped,

  ‘You’ve obviously never metten an Iraqi.’

  Then, as if to prove his point, he began

  To reel off a string of jokes:

  ‘Question: What should Iraq get for its air

  Defence system? Answer: A refund.

  Question: Why doesn’t Saddam go out drinking?

  Answer: Because he can get bombed at home.’

  Berrigan was looking more and more pissed off

  With his countryman, as one gag followed another

  In an endless stream. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ he said,

  Swinging a boot at him. ‘It’s you and your

  Kind who have dragged our flag through the mud.

  We’re out of here.’ At that he turned,

  And began to climb once more up the bank.

  CANTO XXX

  According to myth, Juno was once so

  Enraged against the Thebans over Semele,

  That she made King Athamas go insane,

  So insane, that when he saw his wife

  Stepping towards him, with a child in each hand,

  He cried out: ‘Spread the nets,

  That I may trap the lioness and her cubs

  At the pass!’ And then he spread out his

  Crazy hands as if he were the net,

  Grabbed one of his sons and battered his brains

  Out against a rock. She drowned herself

  with the other one.

  And when Adam Ant, fresh out of the nuthouse,

  Thought someone was threatening his daughter,

  He lost it completely

  Put a brick through the window of

  The Dick Turpin, and pulled out a blunderbuss

  (For he is a keen collector of antiques);

  As the police dragged him off, now out of his mind,

  They say he began to howl, like a dog.

  The thought of going back inside snapped his mind.

  But never in Thebes or London did you see

  Crazies as ferocious as the two naked shades

  I saw now as I looked back into the ditch:

  They charged about madly like wild boar

  When hunted, snarling and snapping

  At anything in their path.

  One, crashing into the comedian,

  Fixed his incisors on his neck-joint, dragging

  Him off so that his belly was flayed by the tarmac.

  Trembling, where he now sat alone, the Kansan

  Cried: ‘You see that crazed spirit? That’s Jonny Saatchi.

  He used to do impressions in the SU Bar,

  Then he earned a tidy sum sitting

  Exams for the Chinese. He’s rabid!’

  ‘And what about the other one?’ I asked.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to know.

  That dude came here as a mature student

  To study Biological Sciences,

  Under Professor Pretty. He was a

  Hardened drinker who got so wasted one night

  That he shagged his own step-daughter,

  She was in Myth Studies, a girl half his age.’

  When the rabid pair, on whom I had kept

  My eyes fixed, had run off

  I shifted my gaze to look on the other

  Ill-born spirits;

  I saw one, a woman, shaped like a lute,

  Except that she still walked on legs,

  Like some creature out of Hieronymus Bosch.

  Bloated by booze

  Her body’s parts were disproportioned

  By unconverted toxins,

  So that her face was all shrunken and petite,

  While her belly stuck out like a wide shelf,

  Or like the prow of a ship,

  And her swollen lips were folded back,

  Parched and wide apart,

  As those of a creature suffering from

  A raging fever, craving a drop to drink.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘what are you doing here,

  Do I know you? And why are you walking

  Around without any affliction?

  I can’t think why you should. Hey?

  Look carefully, and see the misery

  Of Elaine Jordan. When I was still living

  I had enough of what I wished. Ah!

  And I don’t regret it at all, not for

  One moment. But look at me now –

  I crave one drop of water!

  The little streams that run through the fields

  In Dedham Vale, towards Willy Lott’s Cottage,

  I can’t get them out of my head, they haunt

  Me, making me like one of those worried spectres

  In Tennyson’s poetry. Do you read Tennyson?

  Those waters, their memory makes me far

  More parched than this wasting disease.

  I can still see Wivenhoe, where I learned

  To get up at the crack of dawn

  To shuffle up to the Co-op – that hill! –

  So as to feed my habit.

  Ah! If I could find those wretched dons

  That taught me, making me dream,

  So that I stayed up all night.

  The misery of it. If I could lay my hands

  On them, they’re here somewhere, I’m sure of it,

  But these legs of mine won’t go far.

  If I could cover a couple of yards a day,

  And thought they were ten miles away,

  I’d be off. But I can’t even manage that.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘who are those two spirits

  Lying supine beside you,

  Steaming like wet gloves in wintertime?’

  ‘These two? They were here already when I

  Tumbled into this ditch, they haven’t stirred

  Since and I doubt they ever will.

  One of them is John Coombes, he’s so lazy

  He never even bothered to turn up to

  His own lectures. He was always

  Finding some excuse to skive off work,

  Leaving the poor students in the lurch,

  Even in their final year. The other one

  Was the Dean, a gifted linguist,

  But not a real worker like me.’

  Then one of the pair, perhaps disgruntled

  By the introduction he was given,

  Suddenly sat up and struck out with his fist

  At the rigid belly. It sounded like a drum.

  Then Elaine Jordan took a swing at him

  With her arm, catching him on the jaw

  With equal force, saying to him:

  ‘Though I can’t get about like I used to

  I still have a steady arm when required!’

  To which he snapped back: ‘But it wasn’t so steady

  When you used to go out on the piss, was it?’

  ‘Get your hands off me, you old prophet!’

  She yelled. ‘Go back to sleep!

  You think yourself some grand academic,

  But where are all those books you promised?

  You’re nothing but a sham!’

  I was engrossed in their wrangling

  When Berrigan tugged me by the shoulder,

  Saying: ‘Leave off,

  You don’t want to get tied up in these old

  Quarrels, you should know better.’

  When I heard the anger in his voice

  I turned scarlet throu
gh shame.

  I felt like one in a dream,

  Caught in a situation I wished to be out of,

  Who, still dreaming, wishes it only a dream –

  But I was not dreaming. ‘Forget it,’

  Said Berrigan, ‘you don’t need to go there.

  But if you meet up with this sort again,

  Slagging each other off while Rome burns,

  Just remember, I’m here for you. To develop

  A taste for this kind of talk is dangerous.’

  CANTO XXXI

  The same tongue that spoke in anger – stinging

  Me so that blood filled the capillaries in my cheeks –

  Supplied the Savlon for my wound,

  Just as, or so I have read in old books,

  The lance bequeathed to Achilles by his father

  Could heal the injuries it inflicted.

  We turned our backs to the wretched trench,

  Climbing to the top of the bank which girds it round,

  Then we crossed back over the bridge

  And Berrigan led me across the square

  And out of Zone 8 into Zone 9,