Dante's Inferno

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Dante's Inferno Page 4

by Philip Terry


  To the halls of grief?

  But don’t worry,

  They haven’t got a leg to stand on.

  This insolence of theirs is nothing new,

  They showed it once before, at the Knowledge Gateway,

  Which I can assure you

  is now unlocked.

  You saw the deadly words inscribed on its portals.

  And now, already through them, comes one

  Who will open this fucking gate for us.’

  CANTO IX

  When I saw Berrigan bounced back,

  Anger painting his complexion red,

  I turned white as a sheet;

  He tried to calm himself,

  Taking a long drag

  on his cigarette.

  ‘Why the Hell are they blocking our path,

  Surely… but no, we’ve been promised help

  From the highest authority,

  We just need to play it cool.’

  I saw all too clearly how his words

  Plastered over a niggling doubt,

  And couldn’t help imagining the worst:

  This is where our journey ends,

  And there’s no way back.

  Tentatively, I put the question to him:

  ‘Has anyone from your circle

  Ever entered the halls before?’

  At first he looked at me frowningly,

  Then he chuckled,

  flicking away his ash.

  ‘I see where you’re coming from,’ he said.

  ‘Only once in a blue moon

  is someone foolish enough

  To make this trip on which I go,

  But in fact I’ve been down here

  once before.

  We were running out of weed,

  Not to mention amphetamines,

  And Ed Dorn bet me a quarter

  I couldn’t blag my way in here to score.

  Security wasn’t so tight back then,

  I followed the beat up to the tenth floor

  Where a guy called Rots used to have digs,

  A maths student who supported himself by dealing.

  To cut a long story short, I won the bet.’

  He said more, too, but I forget the details,

  For suddenly my eyes were drawn upwards

  To a window near the top of the tower

  Where three drunk students

  Were leaning out, their hair dyed blonde,

  Their look betraying a bad attitude.

  They had fuck-off faces, heavily beslapped,

  Their eyebrows studded with diamonds,

  And round their bare waists hung gold chains.

  Berrigan, who knew well the SU crowd,

  Cried out:

  ‘Look! The Essex Girls!

  That’s Big Meg, the one on the left,

  And that one raving on the right’s Sexy Lexi,

  Tiffany’s the one in the middle.’

  In a flash they stuck out their tits

  Then turned round

  to show us their arses.

  ‘Jordan, over ’ere, we’ll give him a boner!’

  They shouted, leering down at us

  Through false eyelashes.

  ‘Turn around now and shut your eyes,’

  Said my gentle guide, ‘for if Jordan comes,

  No mortal can resist her charms.’

  Thus spoke Berrigan, who stubbed out his fag,

  And turned me around himself,

  Putting his sticky fingers over my eyes.

  (All of you here who understand textual

  Analysis and hermeneutics, note

  The symbolism in the above passage;

  Any resemblance of the characters

  To persons living or dead

  Is coincidental.)

  And then, across the filthy water,

  Came an explosion of sound

  Which made both sides of the lake tremble.

  It sounded like one of those freak hurricanes

  Whipped up by the clash of counter-temperatures

  That tear through buildings and streets

  Tossing trees and cars aloft like toys.

  Berrigan freed my eyes and said:

  ‘Now turn round and take a look across

  The pond, there where the mist is thickest.’

  And as my eyes once more adjusted to

  The light, I saw the figures

  In the mud swim for all they were worth,

  As frogs will flee a lawnmower,

  To get out of the way of a jet-ski

  Which tore across the swelling waters

  Scything off ears and toes as it went

  Carrying a man who must be the head porter.

  I turned round to speak to Ted

  But he made me a secret sign

  Telling me straight away to zip the lip

  In the presence of this man from security.

  Oh, what scorn poured forth from his lips,

  Aimed at the surly students,

  As he reached the heavy gates

  To the burning tower, pulled out his keys,

  And opened them without resistance.

  ‘You bunch of utter wankers!

  How dare you piss about like this

  And get me out at this time of the night.

  Any more trouble like this

  And the lot of you will face disciplinary action.

  And turn that fucking noise down while you’re at it!’

  He turned round then and rode back,

  Across the squalid swan’s road,

  Answering a call on his mobile,

  And on his furrowed brow you could see

  The look of one with different worries

  That were not those he found surrounding him.

  We entered the tower without opposition,

  And I, anxious to investigate the

  Students who lodged in such a fortress,

  cast my eyes about,

  And saw in every direction

  A dwelling of desolation and abjection.

  As at Arles, where the Rhone stagnates,

  Or as at St Mary’s in Colchester,

  Where the lids of the sepulchres

  Are broken

  and cast about,

  So the rooms here were in a mess,

  And burning all about were fierce flames

  Which kept the rooms far hotter

  Than any summer barbecue.

  Each room had its fire-door loose, torn off

  at the hinges,

  And from within came fierce laments.

  ‘Master,’ I asked, ‘what souls are these who,

  Stuck in these stinking digs,

  Make themselves known by their powerful sighs?’

  And Berrigan replied: ‘Here lie wasters,

  Addicts, gluttons and party-goers,

  A lazy bunch who rarely leave their rooms

  Except to get a fix or pick a fight.

  All sorts are crammed in here,

  Left to cook like baked potatoes.’

  Then, after turning at the top of the stairs,

  We passed a kitchen

  bellowing acrid smoke,

  And continued our ascent.

  CANTO X

  Now by a narrow stairwell

  Between the lift-shaft and the outer wall

  My master went on, and I behind.

  ‘Dear Berrigan,’ I said, ‘trusted guide,

  Who leads me through these smoking squats,

  Tell me, will we get a chance to see

  The souls who lie within these rooms?

  The doors are off,

  and nobody’s standing guard.’

  To which Berrigan: ‘You should bear in mind

  The lesson which helped you get out of

  Belfast alive: “Let sleeping dogs lie.”’

  At Berrigan’s words, a man wearing

  The bloodied apron of a butcher,

  Who at first I mistook for a student

  In fancy d
ress, poked his reddened

  Face out of a smoking doorway,

  And eyed us up and down with a look of

  Astonishment. ‘What are you doing here,’

  He said, ‘a living soul patrolling the corridors

  Of the dead? And did I hear you mention

  Belfast, that strife-torn city, which once

  I called home?’ With a gentle push

  Berrigan encouraged me to move forwards

  Towards the door: ‘Choose your words with care,’

  He whispered. ‘Tell me,’ I said,

  ‘For I too hail from that self-same city,

  Though my accent has faded with time,

  Forced into exile as I was

  Still in the flush of youth,

  What part did you play in the troubled

  Past of that bloody city?’ At that

  He pulled himself up with pride

  Smoothing his apron down with his hands,

  And spoke: ‘Young man, let me tell you,

  I ran a salutary business in the

  Pork trade, and I pride myself to this day

  That it was my pork sausages,

  Not an inferior variety, like those

  Supplied by Walls or Colin Glenn,

  That fed the paras and the RUC,

  Not to mention the students of this establishment,

  Till the dirty Fenians took revenge,

  Burning down all my slaughterhouses

  Till in the end I was almost glad of the day

  They showed up at my door dressed in

  Balaclavas, carrying their sawn-off shotguns

  Like the cowards they were, and blew my face off.’

  By the time he had finished speaking

  I had reached the threshold of his room.

  He looked me in the eye and asked,

  Half-contemptuously: ‘And who would your ancestors be?’

  And I, who wanted only to oblige him,

  Held nothing back, but told him freely

  All he might wish to know. At which

  He raised his brows a little, then said:

  ‘Your family, then, must have been the owners of

  That damned dog that roamed

  The streets like a vagabond, and never let off

  Pestering my bitches when they were in heat.

  Not once, but twice, I dragged him back

  To your house by the scruff of his neck,

  Swearing if he ever showed his face again

  I’d make him into sausage meat!’

  Just then, round the same door’s battered frame,

  A shadow arose, visible to the chin;

  It raised itself upon its knees

  And looked about as if it hoped to see

  Whether someone else was accompanying me,

  And when its expectation was quenched

  It stuttered, weeping: ‘If it be genius

  That gives you the right to freely roam

  This blind prison, where is my boy,

  Whose scholarship in US Studies

  Is second to none, and why

  Is he not by your side?’ ‘I’m not alone,’

  I said, ‘that man who waits over there

  Guides me through this stinking cauldron,

  A poet, perhaps, your Owen held in scorn?’

  (His face, and the question he posed, revealed his name

  To me, and made my pointed answer possible.)

  At once, he sprang up to his full height and cried:

  ‘What did you say? He held? Is he not living then?’

  And when he heard the silence

  of my delay

  In responding to his question, he fell back

  Into his room, not to be seen again.

  The other shade, who’d been talking before,

  Showed no concern at all, but turned to me,

  Picking up where he’d left off:

  ‘Tell me, for you might know the answer,

  Why did Essex cancel its contracts with me

  In the 1970s? What was wrong with my bangers?’

  ‘I’m sure there was nothing wrong with them,”

  I said, ‘but the students of that day

  Were mostly hippies, vegetarians who stuck

  Two fingers up at the meat industry;

  They were the generation that picketed

  The livestock exports from Brightlingsea:

  Butchery was out of fashion.’ ‘Unjust! Unjust!’

  He cried, ‘A bunch of pot-smoking good-for-nothings!

  Let me tell you now, for the record,

  This craze for vegetarianism, of which you speak,

  Is one whose years are numbered;

  Before the passage of fifty moons

  It will have died out completely;

  And in days to come the fur trade too

  Will make a healthy comeback:

  Not far off lies the day when coats

  Of mink and fox fur, badger, bear,

  And even Dalmatian will again be worn with pride!’

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ I said,

  ‘But tell me, can you answer a question

  That’s been bugging me:

  If I understand correctly, all of you

  Can see ahead to what the future holds,

  But your knowledge of the present is shaky.’

  ‘Here we see like those with an eye defect,’

  He said, ‘what’s in the distance we see

  Clearly, with 20/20 vision,

  But when an object is up close

  It’s all a blur; without gossip

  We’d know nothing of your living state.’

  Then, moved by regret for what I’d done

  I said: ‘Will you tell your room-mate

  His son is still among the living,

  And if, when he asked, I held my silence,

  Let him know that as he spoke all my thought

  Was taken up with that point you’ve explained.’

  Berrigan had begun to call me back,

  So quickly I asked the shade to tell me

  What other souls were cooking in this tower.

  He said: ‘More than a thousand souls lie here

  With me, among them some of the Angry Brigade,

  One of them’s another poet

  Wrongly imprisoned in life,

  Who now spends her days imprisoned here,

  Anna Mendelssohn, also known as Grace,

  Of the rest I speak not.’ Then he was gone,

  And I turned back towards Berrigan,

  Thinking on what this man had said about the fur trade.

  We moved on, and as we went, Berrigan asked:

  ‘What’s bugging you now? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

  And I satisfied him in his question.

  ‘Look,’ he said firmly, ‘what these people say needs

  To be taken with a pinch of salt.’

  Then he turned to the left, up a stairway,

  And we were nearly knocked out by a fearful stink.

  CANTO XI

  ‘That smell,’ said Berrigan, ‘comes from the bins

  Which lie below, full of uneaten food and

  Stinking rubbish – the bad news is that

  It gets worse the closer you get to it,

  And we’re heading that way.’ Before I had

  A chance to protest, Berrigan had summoned

  The lift which took us down in seconds,

  Then we proceeded a little way on foot.

  The place we came to was the edge of a steep bank

  Composed of broken concrete, mud and steel,

  And here the stench was so powerful

  We had to step back from the precipice.

  Not far from where we stood, Berrigan

  Drew my attention to a giant skip

  Awaiting collection. On stepping closer,

  I saw it was labelled DISSERTATIONS.

  Berrigan noticed the look of shock on my face,


  And tried to reassure me: ‘Not all

  Dissertations suffer this ignoble fate,’

  He said, ‘these are the ones that didn’t toe the

  Line, students who used Freud with Jungians,

  Others who used Derrida with Lacanians.

  The rest are stored in the library.

  Until our noses get used to the stink

  We’d better shelter behind this skip,

  Once we’ve been here a bit you’ll hardly notice it.’

  ‘Is there something we can do to pass the time?’

  I asked. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Berrigan, ‘I’ve

  Thought of that.’ He began to roll a huge joint,

  And as he did so, he said: ‘Beneath these rocks

  Lie many more souls packed in; and since later

  The sight of them will be enough, I’ll tell you a

  Little about them.’ ‘While you’re at it,’ I added,

  ‘Could you also explain the layout of the campus?

  At times I find it hard to fathom.’

  ‘That’s a tough ask,’ he said, ‘but I’ll do my best.

 

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