by Philip Terry
In your voice tells me that you were once from Belfast.
Know then, that I was Bobby Sands, and this
Here is Maggie Bloody Thatcher – now let me
Tell you why I am so unneighbourly.
Maybe I’ve no need to tell youse that it was her
Government that locked us up with common criminals,
Denying us political status
When there was a war on. But the cruelty of
My imprisonment you can not imagine.
When they took away our fucking clothes, we went
On the blanket; when they emptied our chamber pots
All over our fucking beds, only then did we
Start our dirty protest. The stench was appalling,
The cells were literally covered in shite,
And everywhere you looked there were flies and maggots.
It was like something out of Dante, like,
Only this was really happening, in 1979.
Through the thick pane of frosted glass
I’d gazed on many passing moons, when I
Woke to the banging of truncheons on perspex.
Before you could say “Up the IRA!”
We were ripped from our cells and dragged along
The corridor by our legs, then we ran the gauntlet
Of the ranked riot police who hit us with
Truncheons as we passed; we were kicked and
Pushed to the floor, where they pinned us down,
Then sheared us like sheep, scrubbing us
With floor mops, before they tossed us back inside
Our cells. They had done their best to break us,
And had failed, when at last they seemed to give in
To our demands – but it was a lousy trick,
The clothes they offered were not our own.
We trashed the place screaming blue murder,
Vowing revenge on the whole pack of them.
The next day we sat in silence, and the
Day after that as well.
It was around the time they brought our food
That the idea came to me, it had
Worked in the past, so why not try it again?
Hunger Strike. But this one would be to the death,
Each striker starting at intervals, and each time one
Of us died, another man would step into his shoes.
It’s no joke watching yourself die like that,
The pain is indescribable
As you start digesting your own innards –
Anyone but the immovable Thatcher
Would have compromised before ten men died,
But all she said was “A crime is a crime is a crime.”’
When he had spoken these words he rolled his eyes
Like a famine victim, then seized the miserable
Skull with his teeth, which as a dog’s were
Strong upon the bone. Oh Long Kesh, blot
Upon the landscape of that fair country
Where the sound of ‘aye’ is heard!
So what if Bobby Sands bombed the
Balmoral Furnishing Company,
Did that give you the right to make him
And nine others die before letting the
Politicals wear their own shirts?
The greatest betrayal in politics is retrenchment,
And the British Government’s inflexibility,
Matched only by the inflexibility of the hunger strikers
Themselves, prolonged the conflict by 20 years.
We made tracks to where the frost encases
Another pack of shades, not bent downwards
But fixed gazing up.
Here the very weeping puts an end to tears,
And the grief, which cannot find release through their eyes,
Turns inwards like desire in hysteria,
For their first tears formed a frozen knot
And, like freezing eye-packs, filled up
All the cavity beneath their eyebrows.
It was so cold that all feeling had been driven from
My face, my lips were numb, like skin that has
Hardened to form a callus,
Yet even so, it seemed to me I felt
A wind getting up, so I asked Berrigan:
‘What’s the cause of such a wind,
I thought no heat could reach these depths?’
And Berrigan replied: ‘Just be patient, soon
Enough you’ll see for yourself the cause of this blast.’
They must have heard us talking, for one of the shades
With their eyes buried beneath the crust
Cried out as we passed: ‘You wretched sinners,
Sunk so low that you’ve been given the last post!
Remove the hard veils from my eyes,
That I may give vent to my grief a wee bit,
Before the tears ice up again.’
Then I told him: ‘If you want me to give you
Some first aid, first tell me who you are,
And if I don’t help you afterwards
May I be sunk forever beneath the ice.’
He answered then:
‘I am Gerald Barry, I was given life
For murdering Manuela Riedo, a Swiss student
On vacation in Galway, in 2007,
Then they gave me life again, even though I
Pleaded guilty, for the rape of a French student
A couple of months earlier.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘and you’re already dead?
Didn’t you serve your sentence?’
And he replied: ‘Just what my body’s doing
Up in the world I couldn’t tell you,
But I’ll let you in on a secret:
This isn’t the only corner of the campus
Where you’ll find a fellow who hasn’t yet
Popped his clogs. And just so that you’ll be
All the more wanting to peel the ice-flows
Off my face, let me tell you, when a soul
Behaves like I did, a demon takes over the
Body, controlling it like a zombie
For all its remaining days on the earth,
While the soul drops straight into this cistern here;
And that smarmy Baptist wintering out
Behind me, he may well be up on earth still,
For all I know, perhaps you could tell me,
If you’ve just come from there: he’s the
Baptist dentist, Colin Howell, who bumped off
His wife and his mistress’s husband,
Then staged their joint suicide in a car
In Castlerock. He’s been down here so many years
I’ve lost count.’ ‘But that can’t be so,’ I said,
‘I’ve heard about this case, it was only recently
He confessed, after a crisis of conscience,
He’s only just started serving time.’
‘That may well be,’ he said, ‘but believe me,
The souls of Lesley Howell and Trevor
Buchanan had not yet reached the muddy shore
Where Dr May greets the freshers before
The dentist left a zombie in his place
At the surgery, and the same goes
For his accomplice. I swear to you,
That’s God’s own truth. But enough of that,
Lend me a hand as you promised, open
My eyes.’ I did not open them.
To be rude to him was courtesy itself.
Ah, Londonderry! You’ve bred so many
Fucked-up fanatics it’s a wonder God
Doesn’t wipe you off the map, for I found
One of your men, consorting with Galway’s worst,
Who for his foul deeds bathes already in Cocytus,
But his body seems alive and is serving time amongst you.
CANTO XXXIV
‘Now put your goggles on,’ said Berrigan,
‘We’re going into Zone 9, Area D,
The Judas Precinct as they call it,
You’ll see why soon enough.’ As he spoke
I peered ahead through the freezing mist,
Which now blew fiercely into our faces,
And in the distance I could make out
What looked like a huge underground wind-farm,
Though the blades were spinning faster than
Any I’d seen before. ‘What’s with the
Wind-turbines,’ I said, ‘why would you put something
Like that underground?’ ‘That,’ said Berrigan,
‘Is no wind-farm, it was developed by
People in Computer Science to simulate
Arctic weather conditions – the idea was
To reverse global warming, and they thought
The device might have military potential too,
Like their Robotic Fish, you know, kind of
If they won’t do what you want, put their whole
Country into deep freeze. If it had worked, whatever
The ethics, they’d have made a fortune, but they
Couldn’t get it to function outside lab
Conditions, too many variables in the end,
Though it’s highly effective at creating
The freezing conditions down here, which they
Need to preserve the Biological Archive.’
‘The Biological Archive?’ I asked.
Berrigan knelt down and began to scrape
Away the layer of frost that covered
The ice, and as he did so I saw that
Beneath the surface were souls fixed in this
Frozen element (I tremble as I write it in verse),
They looked like flies trapped in an ice cube.
Some of them were lying flat, some stood upright,
Some were suspended upside-down, others,
Like gymnasts, bent their heads towards their toes.
‘Look,’ said Berrigan, ‘that one standing on
His head is Enoch Powell, who gave a talk
Here in the sixties; beside him,
In the military garb, is Dr Inch from
Porton Down, an army research base which
Had links with chemical warfare –
It was his visit which sparked the student sit-in
Which once made Essex notorious.
If you look closely beneath the ice
You can still see a few groups of students
Sitting around – they’ll sit there till doomsday
Waiting for their demands to be met.
Further down still, though so far down you’d be
Lucky to catch a glimpse of them, are the
Politicians who made war on countries
They’d previously been happy to sell arms to –
Some of them you might recognise, like Blair and Bush,
Others are buried so deep you’ll never spot them.’
‘Berrigan,’ I said, ‘why do all these people
Suffer together here, I mean, what do they
Have in common? The students’ cause was just,
From what I know about it, they were fighting
To stop one of their fellows from being expelled
For heckling a fascist.’
‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘like any archive, what’s
Collected here, at the end of the day,
Is a pretty mixed bag, but one thing that
Links all these people together on a
Technical level is the betrayal of
Benefactors:
Blair betrayed those who’d voted him into office
By going to war with Iraq, the students,
Whatever the rights and wrongs of their cause,
Betrayed those who fought to get them a free
Education, and ultimately put this
Right in jeopardy; Powell,
Whose crime is the worst of all,
Betrayed a whole generation
of immigrants.’
I don’t know how long we crouched, gazing into
The ice, but by the time we stood up my
Back was aching. ‘This way,’ said Berrigan,
‘There’s another part of the archive I want
To show you.’ As we advanced into the cooler
We reached a point where our path began to
Descend, and on each side a wall of ice
Rose up. When the path levelled out again
We stopped for breath, for now the wind had dropped,
And looking round I found myself in what
Looked like a maze of corridors carved into
The ice. ‘The Archive of Dreams,’ said Berrigan.
He reached out his hand, touching the wall,
And pulled out a vertical sheet of ice,
Which slid out like a drawer. Looking closely
I could see that it had a text carved
Into its surface. ‘Read it,’ said Berrigan,
‘Or pick another one. This is where all the
Dreams of staff and students who have been
At Essex are stored, there are billions of them.’
As he spoke I pulled out another sheet of ice
On my left and, squinting, read out its contents:
‘In my dream I was racing with the VC down
A long corridor. We both rode penny-farthings.
The faster I pedalled the slower I went.
At the end of the corridor lay my pension.
As we approached it seemed to get further
And further away. When we finally got
To it there was nothing left except a
Pre-decimalisation ten-shilling note.
“I win,” said the VC. (Gender: Female.
Member of: Staff. Age range: 36–45).’
‘OK,’ said Berrigan, ‘now we must go,
We’ve seen it all.’ So saying he took my hand
And led me down a corridor on the right
Which was dark and endless. At last
We came to the head of a metal staircase
Which descended in a spiral, and as we went
Down I grew dizzy. ‘Hold fast!’ said
Berrigan, ‘For by such stairs must we depart
From so much ill. The way is long, and difficult
The road.’ I was hot and sticky by the time
We reached the bottom. Berrigan kicked open
The door and we stepped out into the stinking
Service area once more, making our way
Past the bins and the cars and the litter,
Choking on the fumes which came from Hell’s kitchens,
Till we came to a point from which we could
Once more see the clear light of day.
We took off our snow gear, throwing it
In a skip, and crossed the road,
Stepping straight onto a number 62.
It was crowded with students going home
From class, we couldn’t find a seat for us both.
Then, as we pulled out, Berrigan began
To tremble like a heatwave
and vanished.
The girl beside me was reading her stars.
INDEX
1984, 1
20/20 vision, 1
62 (bus), 1
9/11, 1
Abbey National, 1
Aberfan, 1
Achilles, 1, 2
Act of Union, 1
Adams, Gerry, 1
Adès, Dawn, 1
Aeneas, 1
Aesop, 1, 2
AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), 1, 2, 3, 4
Alps, 1
Al’s Bulge, 1, 2, 3, 4
Alumni, 1
Alverstoke, 1
Amarillo, 1
Amis, Kingsley, 1
Amphion, 1
Angry Brigade, 1
Arab spring, 1
Arbus, Diane, 1
Archive of Dreams, 1
Areas, 1
Arethusa, 1
<
br /> Arias, Óscar, 1
Aristotle, 1
Arles, 1
Art History, 1
Arts Council, 1
Ashbery, John, 1
Auden, Wystan Hugh, 1
Ayres, Pam, 1
Baghdad, 1
Bahia, 1
Balkan Sobranie, 1
Balmoral Furnishing Company, 1
B&Q, 1, 2
Bann, 1
Barclays, 1
Barry, Gerald, 1
Bartle, Richard, 1
Basildon, 1
Bay of Biscay, 1
Beckett, Samuel, 1
Belfast, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Berlusconi, Silvio, 1
Bercow, John, 1
Big Issue, The, 1
Big Meg, 1
Bingo, 1
Biological Archive, 1
Biological Sciences, 1, 2
Blackwater, 1
Blair, Tony, 1
Bloody Sunday, 1
Bogside, 1
Bonzo, 1
Booker Prize, 1
Book of Carthage, The, 1
Bosch, Hieronymus, 1
Botox, 1
Bottomley, Virginia, 1
Boudicca, 1, 2
Boyne, 1
Bradwell, 1
Brainard, Joe, 1
Brightlingsea, 1
British Academy, 1
British Library, 1
Brooks, John, 1
Broomfield, Nick, 1
