by Philip Terry
‘Hello,’ I stuttered, ‘I can only see your feet,
But if you can hear me, and still have a voice, speak.’
I stood like a holy man confessing some
Hardened assassin on Death Row,
Who, strapped in his chair, calls him back
To delay the moment of death:
The feet stilled, then a voice came out,
Muffled, but audible: ‘Is that you on the stair,
Riordan? Here already? The statutes
Were out by several years on your account.
Are you so soon sated with that wealth for which
You made no bones about seizing the university
By deceit, only then to make havoc with her?’
I stood as one in negative equity,
Unsure how to understand what I heard
And uncertain how to reply.
Then Berrigan nudged me, saying:
‘Tell him you’re not the one he takes you for.’
At which I stepped right up to the hole
And did as he instructed. At this
The shade knotted his feet together,
Sighing in a laboured fashion,
Then in a voice which was half whining,
He said: ‘Then what do you want of me?
If you’ve trudged up these stairs, rather than
Take the paternoster, to know who I am,
Learn that I was once clothed in the great mantle,
But beneath the finery
I was greed incarnate, so eager
To advance my own ends, that up above
I stuffed my pockets, and here am stuffed in one.
I was the one who lobbied for top-up fees,
I shut down any subject area that wasn’t
Making a killing, and encouraged those that would
Bring in cash – the EBS was my brainchild, to the arts
I was no friend. Under my head are stuffed all the
Others who came before me, moneygrubbers to a man,
Cowering within the fissures of the rock.
I too will go down there when the one I
Mistook you for retires.
But already I’ve stood toasting in this
Undignified posture longer than he will,
For after him, from the north, will come
A ruthless shepherd who will liquidate
All of the humanities, a man who will
Put our deeds in the shade.
He’ll be another John Brooks:
If he doesn’t shut you down, he’ll either
Pension you off or make you work longer hours.’
He rambled on and on, like one who enjoyed
The sound of his own voice and was used
To his audience hanging on every word.
Perhaps I spoke out of turn, but I answered
Him with what was upmost in my mind:
‘While your salaries can be counted in
Hundreds of thousands,
have you any
idea how much we pay our TAs?
And do you know how much the cleaners earn,
Who even have to pay to park at work?
Do you know what we pay poets?
Stay stuck where you are, for you’ve got exactly
What you deserve; your avarice grieves the world,
And your vision of a chrestomathic university
Chained to markets and so-called creative industries
Leaves no room for thought, and cares nothing for
The rubbished margins of your success story.
It’s you and your like who have put the “vice”
In “vice-chancellor”, you should be ashamed.’
And as I ranted on at him like this,
Like I do when I’m completely pissed,
Whether it was through rage,
Or because he had a bad conscience,
His feet kicked out violently at the air.
I think Berrigan dug what I said,
For all the while he couldn’t stop grinning.
Then he gave me a big bear-hug,
Crushing me against his broad chest,
And holding me like this, he lifted me up,
And didn’t let go until we’d reached
The top of the stairwell, where he put me
Down by a glass cabinet containing
Some pamphlets by Tom Raworth, Lion Lion,
Haiku, From the Hungarian, then after
We’d looked at these for some minutes Berrigan
Turned to me and said: ‘Let’s split.’
CANTO XX
Now I must make punishment into poetry
To make the matter of the twentieth canto
Of the first chant, the one about the fallen.
Already, we had reached that spot from where
You can peer down into the pit of Al’s Bulge;
The floor, here, was sticky with tears,
And walking between the rows of books
Near Sociology and Demographics
I saw people go silent and weeping,
Like a funeral procession in our world.
When my sight descended lower on them
I saw that each was strangely distorted:
Their faces were twisted so that their chins
Rested on their backbones, and they shuffled backwards
To go forwards, gazing down at their own buttocks.
Perhaps there was a case of Freud’s – some forgotten
Hysteric whose hang-ups expressed themselves so,
But none that I’ve heard of.
Reader, if the theorists are correct, you
Need to be active in the construction of the text,
So imagine for yourself whether or not
I could keep my eyes dry, when I saw the
Human form so twisted, that weeping eyes
Streamed down to wash their own arses.
I wept, I couldn’t help myself, since having
A child I’ve gone soft like that.
I had to sit down next to one of the
Computer terminals, then Berrigan said:
‘Quit blubbing, the shades in this hole
Aren’t worth your tears, they’re mostly
Folk who were so tied up with growth charts
Or tea leaves they couldn’t see
What was happening in their own back yards.
Lift your head up, right up, see the
Seismologist for whom the earth
Split wide open while on a research trip
In Haiti. “Where you rushing off to
Doctor?” they cried, as he ran for home;
He kept running till he fell into a crevice
And into the hands of Landman, who gets them all.
See how he makes a chest of his back: because
He wished to see too far ahead he goes backwards.
And look, there’s Tiresias, the old devil,
You’ll have heard of him, he changed himself
From man to woman, altering his bits,
And later, he had to strike two serpents
Coiled together in the grass with his rod,
So that he could resume his man form.
The next one, with her back facing
Tiresias’ belly, is Mystic Meg,
She was a graduate in English at
The University of Leeds who claimed
To possess psychic powers – but she
Didn’t predict the Yorkshire Ripper.
And that one with her long red hair
Covering her breasts, and with her hairy
Parts protruding behind her, was Providence,
Who searched through many lands before
She ended up where I was born; let
Me tell you a little about her history.
After the death of her father, it’s said, she found
Herself alone and with a child in New England;
At that time single mothers were hunted down
Like witches, so she fled into the wilderness
Living for some years in the heart of a swamp
Where she dwelt amongst the Narragansett Indians,
Learning how to treat sickness with natural
Medicines, and how to tell when cold was coming.
Here her daughter secretly married a chieftain,
But they were discovered, then banished, and with the
Mother and some servants they set up a new
Settlement beyond the boundaries of the marsh,
Where the land was uncultivated and
Naked of inhabitants, declaring it a
Place of religious freedom and offering
Equal treatment to Indians and white folk.
There she stopped to practise her arts,
And there she lived
till her 130th year,
When her soul took leave of the earth
And left her body vacant.
Afterwards, they built a city over her
Dead bones, and in memory of her who
First chose the place, they named it Providence.
And now, swear to me, if you ever hear
The origin of my city described otherwise,
Don’t let tall tales rob you of the truth.’
And I replied: ‘Berrigan, I don’t
Believe a word of it, you’re pulling my
Leg, aren’t you?’ And he did not reply,
But let out a loud belly laugh instead.
‘Now tell me,’ I said, ‘no joking, who
Are these shades passing us now,
Are any of them people I should know?’
‘That one,’ he said to me, ‘with the white beard
Falling down his backbone, was a climate
Scientist at UEA, who by fiddling
His data brought just science into disrepute,
You might have seen his story in the papers.
That other one, with the skinny legs,
Was an academic at Carnegie who
Predicted robots would be in every
Household by the mid-1980s.
Behind him is the man who said of rock’n’roll
In 1955: “It will be gone by June.”
And look, this wretched crowd taking up the rear,
They were all women from Essex,
Most of them guilty of nothing but owning a pet,
Tried by Matthew Hopkins for witchcraft,
Then hanged – the methods that dude used would
Raise eyebrows at Guantanamo.
The procession is endless, but come,
We need to get moving, believe me, there
Are plenty more shades for you to meet yet.
Quick, let’s jump into the paternoster
Which will take us to our next port of call.’
And then Berrigan stepped towards the lift shaft,
And when the right moment came, grabbing me, leapt.
CANTO XXI
As we reached the top of the paternoster
I saw the red sign warning us to alight –
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Berrigan,
As we lurched on, into the darkness.
When the lift reached the highest point of
Its trajectory, it began to go down once more,
And just as it did so a door appeared
Which I hadn’t noticed before. I’d scarcely
Had time to read the words NO ENTRY,
When Berrigan shoved me through it
Then jumped in behind,
As the paternoster continued its course:
The place we came to was strangely dark.
On the waterfront at Wivenhoe,
Just down from the Rose and Crown,
Lies a busy boatyard, where in winter
They boil the dark brown pitch to caulk their boats;
As they cannot sail, here, between pints, they toil:
Some build new boats, bending the planks into
Shape with steam, others repair old ones,
Plugging the broken boards
with fibreglass,
Some hammer at the prow, some at the stern,
Some make oars, some mend the sails.
Here, too, but heated by a thermoelectric
Ring, not a camping gas, a sticky brown soup
Boiled away in an industrial-sized vat,
All smeared round the rim with sticky residue.
I peered into it, but saw nothing there,
Only the huge bubbles, which rose and fell.
I was standing there, gazing fixedly into
The soup, when Berrigan shouted: ‘Watch out!’
Then pulled me to him from where I stood.
As I turned round, I saw behind us,
Cruising along the rim, a caterer,
Winged, dressed in black. He looked scary,
Like someone you wouldn’t want to mess with,
His wings outstretched as he skimmed over the broth.
‘Now you can see,’ said Berrigan, ‘the raw
Recruits for the new Catering College.’
On one of his hunched shoulders, this one carried
A young student from the summer school.
He shouted out from above the soup: ‘Hey!
Kitchen Devils! Here’s one of Saint Zita’s
Children, you know, the exchange students from Lucca,
You shove him under while I go back for more.
They really are a bunch of Mafiosi, this lot,
They’ll do anything for a backhander,
Except their tutor, Paolo, of course – he wouldn’t
Let me touch them until I offered him
Some free luncheon vouchers.’
He flung him in, then wheeled off over the soup;
I’ve never seen a police dog move so fast,
Not even to catch a G7 protester.
The student plunged in, head first,
Then rose to the surface, waving his arms about
As he tried to come up for air.
‘No backstroke allowed in this pool!’ cried one
Of the Kitchen Devils, ‘You’re not in the
Serchio now! Unless you want to feel
Our forks, I’d stay under the surface, mate!’
Then they all jabbed him with their prongs,
Like scullery boys poking the meat into
The pot to keep it near the flame.
Berrigan said: ‘You’d better keep a low profile
And let me do the talking, otherwise
They might want to throw you into the pot –
It’s a long time since they had fresh meat.’
He left me crouching behind a pile of old
Cookbooks, as he stepped forward to talk to them.
With all the noise and ferocity of guard dogs
Rushing out on an unsuspecting rambler,
The Kitchen Devils surrounded Berrigan,
Turning against him all their crooks.
But Berrigan stood his ground, and said:
‘Hold it right there, you’re wasting your time
If you think you’re going to hook me –
Who’s in charge here? Let me have a word with them.’
They all cried: ‘Jamie, he wants you!’
At which one stepped forward from their midst.
This one had no wings and wore a checked shirt,
Saying: ‘Sorry, guv’nor, but you’ve entered
A restricted area – only
Catering students are allowed down here.’
‘Look,’ said Berrigan, losing his patience,
‘Do you really think I’d have gotten this far
Without recommendation from the top? Our trip
Has approval from the Dean, from the VC,
And we have funding from the AHRC,
What more do you want?’
At this, all his bravado collapsed,
The ladle he carried, too, fell to his feet,
And he said to the others: ‘Hands off this one!’
Now, Berrigan called me from my
Hiding place, yet as I stepped towards him,
From the movements they made, and from the
Looks on their faces, I was worried they
Would break their pact. I was reminded of
A photograph I had seen of de Valera’s
Men on the day they surrendered,
And the worried looks on their faces
As they marched past the Brits.
I drew up near to Berrigan, my guide,
Keeping a close watch on the under-chefs.
They fingered their prongs, saying:
‘Shall I give him one up the arse?’
And ‘Why don’t we show him the carvery?’
But Jamie, who spoke with my guide, turned round
And said: ‘You lot, behave! Or you’re out of here!’
Then he turned to us, saying: ‘If you’re
Trying to find your way out of the kitchens
You’re heading the wrong way – the fire exit’s blocked.
If you want to get out you’ll need to walk round
This vat of soup and go through the café.