For the Tempus-Fugitives

by Christopher Norris

They’ve noticed, seem increasingly to shy

  Away when some chance conversation tends

  Toward topics that might prompt the question why

  Their work’s not featured anywhere among

  The departmental listings, or—to try

  Their patience further—why slips of the tongue,

  Like “Prof. Emeritus,” so often turn

  Up just when some research committee’s sprung

  The kind of news they’re always last to learn,

  Though always first to suffer from through cuts

  In funding. Hence those motions to adjourn

  Decision-making till the ifs and buts

  Can be thrashed out by colleagues with a due

  Sense of the risk that their department shuts

  For want of room to move them up the queue,

  Those bright young scholars fresh from Ph.D.’s

  On the right topics and keen to pursue

  Careers best suited to their expertise.

  In short, the system’s jammed if all the roads

  That lead to academe are blocked from these

  Exemplary observers of the codes

  And protocols by a large rump of old

  Retainers hanging on in sheer busloads

  Until kicked out, or dead, or firmly told

  To step aside. Else they’re kept on in some

  Near-sinecure that feels like they’re paroled,

  Not as with those let out though told to come

  Back punctually but those allowed to hang

  Around on strict condition they’ll keep mum

  And spare their colleagues all that Sturm und Drang

  Self-pitying stuff when finally it’s time

  For new blood to invigorate the gang

  While they bow out content with the sublime

  Self-abnegating ruse of saying they’ve

  Been hoping all along the thing would chime

  With their plans for retirement. Yet to stave

  It off like that, the death-watch count that starts

  With gifts and talk of service that they gave

  For such long years, may very well touch hearts,

  Their own included, for a while but soon

  Gives way to the hard lesson it imparts

  That their departure’s nothing but a boon

  To those well-wishers. And it turns out just

  The same with everything they’d thought immune

  To time’s long-term revenges, from the trust

  They’d placed in higher learning to the worth

  Of some few books and articles that must,

  They’d thought, do something to make up the dearth

  Of other things by which—since it’s the sort

  Of wish we’re apt to have—their stay on earth

  Should stay in mind. Thus people might report.

  How their old colleague, now retired, had “left

  This world a better place,” or not been short

  Of kind words for the suffering or bereft,

  Or—in their case a somewhat smaller stretch

  Of counterfactual thinking—shown a deft

  And tactful touch in knowing how to fetch

  Up ego-soothing ways to heal a rift

  Between old colleagues. But if that’s the sketch

  They like to draw as summing up the drift

  Of their own Times obituary this fond

  Self-image proves apt to get shorter shrift

  With each hard knock against the world beyond

  Their donnish fantasy. For now it’s past

  Reviving like some far-back autre monde,

  That time when colleges retained a cast

  Of amiable eccentrics whose chief claim

  To any good repute that might outlast

  Their tenure or afford them local fame

  Was down to such remembrance plus a bunch

  Of minor publications to their name

  If so desired. But then there came the crunch,

  The new Gleichschaltung under which regime

  The old dissenters were ruled out to lunch

  And those with all the power in academe,

  Mid-managers and up, took special pains

  To stress how everybody on the team

  Must show not merely that they had the brains

  But that they’d seen right through the old pretence

  Which says: there’s only one thing that explains

  How genius outperforms intelligence

  And that’s (as Pope described it) something “sure

  To madness near allied” where plain-prose sense

  Recedes from view. A self-applied quick cure

  For such ideas is what the times require

  And what best helps the new lot reassure

  Their research-managers that they aspire

  No higher than to make that mid-life switch

  To management themselves, and then retire

  After a smooth career-path without hitch

  Since perfectly adjusted to the need

  That all who take it be prepared to ditch

  Such rogue ambitions. These were what decreed

  They strive above all else to leave a mark

  Of individual genius or succeed

  In making sure theirs is the only spark

  Of intellectual brilliance that shines out

  As one fixed beacon in the deepest dark

  Whose signal power such individuals tout

  Against the heaviest odds. If these are stacked

  Too high to leave the outcome in much doubt

  Then put it down to the implicit pact

  Between those fixers of a fine new deal

  For management and all the shifts it tracked

  In public mood, like how the old appeal

  Of ‘eccentricity’ and all those tales

  Of absent-minded profs have come to feel

  Distasteful now that everybody quails

  Before the prospect of their own last years,

  Or how it goes as each last system fails

  And there’s no way to calm the mounting fears

  With Einstein-anecdotes that used to hike

  The spirits but now seem a myth that cheers

  Only the credulous. Yet, lest it strike

  The mind-administrators as a piece

  Of crass pop-science conjured up to spike

  Their bureaucratic guns or mere caprice

  Of tenured scatter-wits, let this thought cross

  Their own much tidier minds: should that lot cease

  Their errant ways then how compute the loss?

  A WORD CHILD

  Certain cerebrovascular disasters are called “insults to the brain”…the more prodigious the brain, the more studious (and in this case protracted) the insult. Iris’s brain was indeed prodigious.

  Soon, “the most intelligent woman in England” (Bayley’s plausible evaluation) is watching the Teletubbies with a look of awed concentration on her face.

  —Martin Amis, The Guardian, December 21, 2001

  CBeebies helps; the Teletubbies tell

  Nice stories with no need for stuff about

  Despair, life-crises, Angst, ideas that “hell

  Is other people,” existential doubt,

  Or authenticity. Time was, she’d dwell,

  She and her characters, on ways to tout

  Love-interests of the sort that went down well

  With readers chiefly keen to figure out

  What latest crise de conscience might compel

  Some new twist in the story-line or bout

  Of agonised soul-searching. Now the spell

  Cast on her by this glossolalic rout

  Of tiddler-tv dummies works to quell

  Her rare face-clouding intervals of doubt

  When voices from beyond the painted shell

  Of wonder-land might just be heard to shout

  The curse that once resounded
from the bell

  In her most gothic novel, yet without

  Its old power to appal. For now they fell

  From far off on the ears of one devout

  No longer in response to its dark knell

  But to how Laa-Laa, Po and Dipsy flout

  All rules of sense by which their clientele

  Of infant viewers might be caused to pout.

  A FAMILY BUSINESS

  “A Family Business” has to do with Margaret Thatcher’s chapel-going childhood, her small-town petty-bourgeois social background, her rise to power, her domestic and foreign policies, and above all the massive and enduring effects of her period in office. The poem will I think be fairly uncontroversial in reflecting on her father’s likely influence but perhaps more of a red rag to various bulls in what it says about the tenacity, psychological depth, and morally damaging character of that influence. There are moments of comparative light relief but the piece is basically an exercise in Juvenalian saeva indignatio, or the sort of satire that takes no hostages and which extends no tolerant ironic allowances for human frailty or untoward circumstance. In fact there are passages where the indignatio almost overwhelms the satire and, as tends to happen with such writing, the poetry takes on a decidedly angry—though I hope not abrasive—tone.

  Three pews back on the right she sits, devout

  And hanging on each word the preacher aims

  At those few souls elect who know about

  Shop-keeping and the providential claims

  Of shrewd accountancy along with that

  Fine double-entry scheme of things that frames

  Their godly warrant for arriving at

  New ways to optimise the current state

  Of family fortunes. This they’ve got off pat

  Through years of diligence to correlate

  Their Christian faith with what attracts the most

  Lucrative custom at the lowest rate

  Of overheads or taxes one could boast

  About in decent company and not

  Raise pious eyebrows. There she sits, engrossed,

  As he (her father) tells them how they’ve got

  To lay up worldly goods as well as store

  Up blessings that would pay out on the dot

  At that great day of reckoning when the more

  Astute among them who’d resolved to look

  Out for themselves and theirs would surely score

  Top marks in God’s panoptic ledger-book

  Of souls redeemed. Not so that other bunch

  Whose talk of social conscience showed they took

  The gospel texts to preach some out-to-lunch,

  Most likely socialist idea of how

  To save us from the moral credit-crunch

  That came of living for the here-and-now

  Of private greed. On this he reassured

  His restive congregation: they allow,

  Indeed demand, a gloss for readers cured

  Of such delusive notions and aware

  That what most efficaciously ensured

  The soul’s deliverance from its mortal share

  Of sinfulness was not the vain desire

  To give up, Lear-like, all the goods in their

  Hard-won possession. Let them heed the prior

  Since commerce-tested maxim that the way

  To true salvation might instead require

  That one give up those hopelessly passé

  Ideas of soul-salvation that decreed

  An end to acquisition and convey,

  Rather, the soul’s as well as body’s need

  For laying in enough to see them through

  Hard times ahead. Then maybe they’d succeed

  (The alderman admonished) and undo

  The ill effects of that false message spread

  By liberals and social-hopers who

  Believed the task of giving daily bread

  To those in need of it was higher on

  The to-do list than seeking to embed

  The fear of God in human hearts far gone

  In wickedness. His daughter ponders this

  And other points in his distinctly non-

  PC approach that some might take amiss

  Though just the cure (she thinks) for that malaise

  Of faith misplaced that looks for future bliss

  In some fine programme for a higher phase

  Of ethical advancement when the whole

  Existing scheme will enter its last days

  And then emerge transformed. She sees her role

  Already as the messenger who’ll bear

  His tidings from that chapel where the sole

  Mark of success was rousing folk to prayer

  And make of it a doctrine that would cause

  Even old socialists, caught unaware

  By her new gospel-truth, to doubt the laws

  Of progress. These (they took it) should consist

  In keeping their utopias on pause,

  Projecting justice as a long-term tryst

  With history, and—when medium-term defeats

  Piled up—recalling all the chances missed

  As evidence of how the world mistreats

  Those visionary few who’d prove at last

  The ones who got it right. In the mean streets

  Of Grantham, Lincs, the Zeitgeist stands aghast

  As those beliefs that once maintained a bond

  Between politicos of every cast

  From centre-left to centre-right, beyond

  Mere party politics, are felt to lose

  All pertinence and so at length respond

  By self-destructing as the parties choose

  Their lesser evil or, more often, opt

  For some malign amalgam that would fuse

  The worst of every world. Why had they stopped,

  She wondered, those old Tories she despised,

  Short of the perfect answer: to adopt

  The techniques he’d successfully devised,

  Her preacher-patriarch, to keep his flock

  Of listeners so routinely unsurprised,

  Like her, by such hard sayings as would shock

  Those with more tender consciences, upset

  The ‘Socialists for Jesus’ lot, or knock

  A hole in all things shored against the threat

  Of old Jehovah. These might take the form

  Of biblical remonstrance or be let

  Loose like a kind of Benjaminian storm

  From paradise that left its mounting pile

  Of debris and propelled the shambling swarm

  Of progress-touters forward all the while

  Toward the same catastrophe whose dread

  Event he’d conjured up. His graphic style

  Left little doubt of how it should be read

  By God’s elect as yet another sign,

  If such were needed, that the daily bread

  The Lord’s Prayer spoke of, like the loaves and wine

  Of Canaan, figured forth the moral good

  Of gainful trade. Let no-one then repine,

  He cautioned, if the texts thus understood

  Seemed lacking in those qualities that earned

  The praise of social-gospellers who could,

  By cunning tweaks, convince us they discerned

  In scripture Christ’s intention to inspire

  His followers, then and now, with lessons learned

  From proto-communism’s book, or fire

  Their fervent souls with some perverse new take

  On the old texts that reckoned all their dire

  Apocalyptic prophecies would make,

  If suitably construed, a fine device

  To turn his message right around and shake

  Its biblical foundations. So they’d splice,

  Those heretics, a secularizing mode

  Of exegesis with the kind of twice-

  Born zeal for some redemptive twist that show
ed

  Them destined from the outset to that fate

  Decreed for all who falsified the code

  Of scripture since they thought such change of state

  Pertained to Caesar’s realm or the domain

  Of social justice where we might create

  Some ersatz heaven on earth. This he’d explain

  By citing verse and chapter week by week

  Until his exhortations filled her brain

  With their bewildering mix of bible-speak

  And his own trademark brand of Poujadiste

  Small-town ressentiment that made him seek,

  Each Sunday, some occult sign of the beast

  Now slouching close. Or he’d find nearer home

  Some new and shocking sign of how we’d ceased

  To honour parents, dutifully comb

  The Good Book for instruction, hold in awe

  The Ten Commandments, count the Church of Rome

  Most grievously in breach of every law

  Laid down for our salvation, and—his theme

  In stressful times—acknowledge the deep flaw

  In human nature. This should make it seem

  Sheer hubris, so the lesson ran, to think

  In terms of social progress or to deem

  Us capable of virtues that would prink

  Our defects out in any decent dress