Dante's Inferno

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Dante's Inferno Page 7

by Philip Terry


  And Berrigan replied: ‘My companion’s

  Been there more recently than I have,

  He should be able to give you the low-down.’

  At once I turned red with embarrassment.

  If ever I regretted telling a lie

  This was the moment.

  Berrigan had asked me if

  I’d ever been to the US, and ashamed

  To admit I hadn’t, I’d said,

  er,

  I recently went to New York.

  Now my fib was coming back to haunt me

  And I was going to have to bullshit my way out.

  ‘Well,’ I began, all of them hanging on

  My every word, ‘I don’t know the city very well,

  To tell the truth,

  I’ve only been there for

  a long weekend,

  But from what I hear people are a little

  Bit jumpy since 9/11. And

  The village isn’t what it used to be,

  I’m told, it’s been taken over by

  People in marketing and the media,

  The new bourgeoisie,

  And the artists have been priced out.’

  I blurted out the words without thinking,

  My mouth moving without my brain engaged,

  As one does when asked a question at a conference.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Brainard, ‘it’s just like David says.

  If you always answer questions this easily,

  Poet, then you’re a happy man!

  Now listen, if you manage to get out of this

  Place alive, and return to gaze on the

  Beauteous stars, see that you speak of us to men.’

  Then they broke up their wheel and fled across

  The sand, and as they fled

  Their nimble legs seemed like wings in flight.

  When they were out of sight, Berrigan turned to

  Depart, and I followed, close behind.

  We had not gone very far along the track

  Before our senses were overwhelmed with

  The clanking of loud machinery,

  As one hears outside the town of Carrara,

  Or on the industrial estate at Harlow,

  Yet as we advanced, now along a tarmac

  Track, we soon found ourselves

  Treading the rim of a vast and bottomless

  Pit gouged into the earth

  Without pity.

  Here no trees grew, nor any scrub, and what remained

  Of the earth was scorched and burned up;

  Everywhere dust blew about

  Whipped by a spiralling wind which

  Rose from the depths of the pit.

  Along the rim, a few houses still clung on,

  Their gardens already devoured by the chasm.

  When we had taken in our new surroundings,

  Berrigan led me along a narrow spit of land

  Flanked by the void on either side,

  Which took us to a small island perched above

  The hollow, where a few gravestones stood,

  And the burning remains of a church.

  I wore a bum-flap, clipped to my jeans,

  Which I kept about me as a lucky charm,

  And here Berrigan turned towards me

  And asked me to unclip it; I did as

  He suggested, then he hurled it out far into

  The abyss, and winking: ‘It’s as I thought –

  A punk and his bum-flap are soon parted,’

  He said. ‘Now watch!’

  It’s always better to hold one’s tongue

  In circumstances where if you speak nobody’s

  Going to believe you anyway, and I guess

  That’s why Berrigan kept his silence now.

  But that’s no reason for my poem to

  Shut up too. Reader, I swear to you,

  I saw this giant spectre, it was like

  A colossal jellyfish, or an airship, swimming

  Through the smoke-filled air from the depths

  Of the pit – it held its arms out like tentacles.

  CANTO XVII

  ‘Steady,’ said Berrigan, ‘don’t lose your nerve.

  This creature which you behold swimming up

  From the quarry pit, with its arms outstretched

  In supplication, is no enemy, nor is

  It an evil spirit – it’s the soul of

  The trees which were desecrated to make

  This eyesore, in the face of local opposition.

  Even Swampy couldn’t have put a stop

  To this development, so rapacious

  Are the quarry company and their backers.

  Here profit is the only good, and here

  You see the results of that philosophy,

  Which no scorched earth policy could match.’

  These were the words I heard Berrigan speak

  As he beckoned the creature to come ashore

  Near the end of the rocky promontory.

  The gentle creature, its eyes full of pain

  And sorrow, came onward, landing its head

  And trunk, but drew not its roots upon the bank.

  Its face was like that of a mother who

  Has lost all her children in some catastrophe

  Yet it shone from inside with a glow of

  Benediction; within its translucent head no

  Brain matter, but the ghostly silhouettes of trees.

  As at times fishing boats lie on the shore,

  Moored part on water and part on land,

  Or as the endangered beaver, once common

  On the polluted banks of the Rhine

  In the land of the rowdy bierkellers,

  Squats to hide from its persecutors,

  Just so this great creature lay upon the

  Brim of that dusty and bottomless pit.

  Berrigan said: ‘Let’s take a shortcut to

  Where the king of limbs has landed.’

  Then we made our way down on the right and

  Took ten paces towards the edge

  Careful to avoid the flames which were falling here.

  When we came to the creature, I saw nearby,

  Crouched in the burning ruin of the church,

  People huddled close to the altar.

  Here Berrigan said to me: ‘So you can

  Get a complete picture of this Zone,

  Go over and have a word with them,

  But don’t hang around; meanwhile I’ll have a

  Talk with our friend here, and see if we can

  Borrow his strong shoulders.’ Leaving Berrigan

  Behind, I sidled up to these woeful folk,

  Sheltering under the narthex.

  Their eyes appeared to be bursting with grief;

  On this side and on that their hands were flapping

  To ward off the flames and the burning flakes

  Of sand which rained down on them without let-up.

  They were like dogs in summer, plagued by

  Fleas that bite them, attacking

  Their itch now with snout, now with paw.

  When I had examined the faces of

  A few of these wretches on whom the flames fell

  I couldn’t recognise anyone, so burned up

  Were their features, but I noticed that each

  Wore a singed baseball cap or a T-shirt,

  On which I recognised some of the logos,

  And these they seemed to wish to protect from

  The flames at the expense of all else.

  I saw the crest of a blue eagle, a

  Black horse, four red triangles arranged to form

  A hexagon, a blue and white globe and

  A black key; then one who wore a sweatshirt

  Stamped with a blue cross surrounded by four

  Circles, said: ‘What are you doing in this pit?

  Didn’t you see the KEEP OUT signs?

  If you’re a protestor, you’re too late,

 
Get out of here! And seeing you’re still alive,

  You can tell my friend Sir Fred Goodwin

  That I have a pew reserved for him right here,

  And another one for Peter Cummings,

  A lot hotter than his villa on the

  Costa del Sol!’ Then he made a face, thrusting

  His tongue out like a bull that licks its nose.

  Not wanting to try Ted’s patience, and he’d

  Told me to be quick, I hurried back to his side,

  Where I found him already saddled up

  On the trunk of that great spectre, and he

  Said to me: ‘I forgot to ask, how’s your

  Horsemanship? You’ve read Castiglione,

  Now’s the time to put your book-learning to the test!’

  I climbed up beside him as one who

  Reluctantly boards a scary ride at

  The funfair, then, putting his arms about

  Me, he said: ‘Tree spirit, now we’re ready,

  Take it slowly, be mindful of the living weight

  You carry.’ As a ferry goes from its mooring

  Backwards, so this living airship moved,

  And when it felt itself free from the ridge

  There where its trunk had been it turned its roots

  Which undulated like the tentacles of

  An octopus, propelling us over the abyss.

  I doubt if Phaethon feared more when he took

  The reins of the chariot of the sun,

  Scorching the earth as can still be seen today,

  Or if Harry Potter was more afraid

  The first time he mounted a broomstick

  In a game of quidditch, than I was then

  When I saw only air on all sides

  And saw extinguished every sight

  Save the broad back of the king of limbs.

  He goes on, swimming slowly, rising up

  Like a jumbo jet played back in slow motion,

  Then wheels round, changing track,

  But I only know this from the wind in my face.

  From below, I hear the roar of machinery,

  As it scythes into the earth, and at this

  I stretch out my neck to look down,

  But doing so only made me more apprehensive,

  For beneath me I could see nothing but

  A city of flames, full of fearful cries

  And lamentings, and I drew back tightening

  My grip. And then I saw what I had not

  Been able to till then: the spiral path

  Of our descent, like that of a jet coming in

  To Stansted, that has to kill time before

  The runway is clear, and as we went down

  I saw torment heaped upon torment

  Closing in on us from every side.

  The tree spirit brought us down gently,

  Before a building that resembled a

  Multi-storey car park, and here we alighted.

  Unburdened, the ghost shot off, like an arrow from a bowstring.

  CANTO XVIII

  Hell has a stricture called Al’s Bulge,

  A block of

  ferruginous-hued concrete;

  At the gateway of this tottering

  Pile is a huge chasm,

  for unread books.

  Abandoned by the tree spirit,

  Berrigan walked

  Straight in, me behind.

  Packed into the dusty foyer,

  New misery I see,

  new hands on the whip:

  Naked scholars

  Stuck in two-way traffic,

  Against us this side, with us that,

  Like the ranks when Diana died,

  As on one side they queued to sign,

  On the other to escape the tide.

  Here some queued to take out books,

  Others to find them, crammed into

  Paternosters, some going up, some down.

  On both sides

  Librarians in horn-rims

  Flayed students fiercely,

  Hell, how they made them bleed

  In Freshers’

  Week!

  Struggling to move, my eyes lit on

  One man; immediately I think

  ‘I recognise this one,’

  And as I stop to make him out better,

  Berrigan, my guide,

  stops too.

  The one with the weals tries to hide,

  Lowering his swarthy face; but it’s no use,

  ‘Friend,’ I say,

  ‘Aren’t you he

  who translated our Percy

  Into the Conquistadors’ noble tongue?’

  And he says, ‘I grudge telling you;

  But your meaning forces me,

  It brings me back to old tomes.

  I was he who couldn’t get enough

  Of the wives of friends;

  Drawing the beef curtains,

  As the smutty story says.

  To cover my tracks

  I kept

  A hoover

  in the trunk of my Rover;

  Caught in flagrante

  I’d dash out for

  My equipment, make out I was

  A rep.’

  As he speaks

  the Head Librarian,

  A softly-spoken Scot,

  hits him with a lash

  saying, ‘Get going, you ogre!

  Women aren’t meat here.’

  In a few steps we reach

  where the paternoster yawns

  Below,

  Letting the lashed

  Go under, into the shit,

  That seemed on tap from some sewer.

  Rolling a joint, Berrigan points

  Towards the

  stairs,

  ‘See that haughty one,’ he says,

  ‘Like a goatherd down from the mountain,

  Seeming to scorn any tears at pain?

  He’s a dude whose skill with myth

  Got him inside

  many knickers.

  He hitch-hiked to Lemnos once,

  After the first-generation feminists

  Had slaughtered their menfolk.

  Here his gilded tongue

  Tricked Hypsipyle, a young poetess,

  And he left her all alone, pregnant.

  And over there a little,

  clawing off the shit,

  The one in heels

  With the pink leather suit

  and all the lipstick,

  Look closely at that woman’s face,

  Under the stinking make-up,

  that’s our Professor Emerita,

  A hard-nosed Lacanian,

  whether she’s

  written more books

  Or screwed more dons

  Is a tough call.’

  CANTO XIX

  David Willetts, you wanker, and your shit-brained

  Followers, pick-pockets in silk suits,

  Who play the pimp with HE,

  Which should be a right,

  and free;

  Can you imagine being told, age 25,

  That you’d got cerebral palsy and the

  Treatment would cost you an arm and a leg –

  But it’s OK, you can defer payment,

  Spread it over 20 years, no cause for alarm…

  Don’t you ever stop

  to think?

  Now, in your honour, let the fire-alarm sound,

  For it’s here, in Al’s Bulge,

  ‘The Pits’, as the students call it,

  That you and your kind hang out.

  Already, we had stopped, to spit on his statue,

  When we began to make our way

  Up a wide granite stairway.

  On the side wall, as we climbed,

  I noticed what at first I took for

  Some weird art installation,

  Something from the Latin American Collection:

  Here a series of round holes were

  Punched into livid rock. The
y looked

  About as wide and as deep as a manhole,

  And from the mouth of each a pair of feet

  Stuck out, and legs up to the knee,

  And these were twitching frenziedly, as if

  Dancing to electropop, like a robot

  From 1984, while on the soles of

  The feet a flame too danced, as

  Lit brandy on a Christmas pudding.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Berrigan,

  ‘But this is no surrealist montage,

  The feet you see sticking out of the wall

  Belong to the vice-chancellors

  Of the university, the rest of their bodies

  Are stuffed inside.’

  ‘Who’s that one,’ I asked, ‘the one

  Who’s really going for it

  up ahead?’

  ‘If you really want to know, why don’t

  You ask him yourself?’ said Berrigan.

  ‘He can talk.’ When we reached the eighth

  Or the ninth step, where the stairs begin to turn

  To the left, we came up close to the cleft.

 

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