Dante's Inferno (2 page)

THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE DOLEFUL CAMPUS,

THROUGH ME THE WAY TO ETERNAL DEBT,

THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE FORSAKEN GENERATION.

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT INSPIRED MY FOUNDERS;

POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY RUINED ME,

COUPLED BY BETRAYAL OF PRINCIPLE AND PLEDGE.

BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS

WERE MADE, NOW I SHALL MARK YOU ETERNALLY.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE.

I saw these words spelled out on a digital display

Above the entrance to the Knowledge Gateway.

‘Master,’ I said, ‘this is scary.’

He answered me, speaking with a drawl:

‘Now you need to grit your teeth,

This isn’t the moment to shit yourself.

We’re at the spot I spoke about

Where you will see souls in pain

Who perverted the good of intellect.’

Placing his hand on my shoulder, and flashing

Me a smile, though not one that reassured me,

He led me in.

Here groans and cries and shrieks of grief

Echoed through the freezing fog

And made me weep with fear;

A confusion of tongues,

Greek, Polish, Arabic, German, Dutch,

Strained with notes of tortured woe,

Rose into the sightless air,

Like frenzied seagulls

                                   at a landfill site.

And I: ‘What’s this

                                     noise I hear?

Who are all these tortured by grief?’

And Berrigan replied: ‘They are surfers,

Dudes who coasted through life, drifting in and out

Of degrees and jobs without conviction.

They are mixed with those repulsive civil servants

Neither faithful nor unfaithful to their leaders,

Whose love was all for self.

Oxbridge, to keep its reputation, annulled

Their degrees, and even Essex

                                  would not honour them.’

‘Master,’ I asked, ‘what’s eating them?

Why are they making such a racket?’

‘That,’ he says, ‘I can tell you in a nutshell.

They have no hope of death

Yet the life they lead is so low

That they envy all the other shades.

Nobody on earth will remember them;

Funding bodies dismiss them out of hand.

Let’s not talk about it: look and walk on.’

And as I looked I saw in the gloom

A giant screen, and on it the giant mouth

Of a talent show host, a man called Callow,

If I caught it right; in front of the screen

Such a crowd had gathered, I wondered

How death could have undone so many.

A few of these tortured souls I recognised,

Among them a couple of red-heads:

One who had amassed a few credits

In Philosophy and Literature before

Drifting into telecommunications sales,

Another who had been unable to choose

Between poetry and stand-up.

These wretches were stripped naked

And picked on by wasps and hornets

Which buzzed in their ears

And made their swollen faces run with blood

And pus, where fat maggots fed.

When I looked away from this awful sight

I saw another crowd queuing by the bank

Of a swamp which had formed in a building site.

                                       ‘Master,’ I asked,

‘Are these more students? What makes them

So eager to make the crossing?’

And Berrigan, my guide, replied:

‘Hold your horses, you’ll see

                                          soon enough.’

And I, biting my lip,

Said nothing more,

              until we reached the muddy shore.

Then suddenly, coming towards us in a bark,

An old man, hoary white with eld,

Bellowed: ‘Woe to you, wicked students! Hope not

Ever to see a grant again. I come to take

You to the main campus

Into eternal loans, there to dwell

In sticky heat and dry-ice. And thou, who there

Standest, live spirit! Get thee hence, and leave

These who are dead.’ And when he saw I didn’t

Budge, he added: ‘By other way

Shalt thou come ashore, not by this passage.

Thee a nimbler boat must carry.’

Then Berrigan spoke slowly: ‘This is no time to get

Imperious, Dr May, it is willed by Senate,

That is all you need to know. Step aside.’

His words brought silence to the woolly cheeks

Of the boatman guarding the muddy swamp,

Whose eyes glowed like burning coals.

But all the students, shagged out and naked,

Grew pale, and their teeth began to chatter,

At the pronouncement they’d heard.

They cursed the day they were born, they

Cursed the coalition, they cursed their fathers

For not having vasectomies.

Then, like lost souls, wailing bitterly,

They squelched knee-deep in mud, towards

The shore of the forsaken building site.

Dr May called them together with his

Ferryman’s song, and with his oar he walloped the

Latecomers, saying: ‘Put that on your SACS forms!’

As at the start of the Autumn term,

When the leaves begin to fall,

Covering the ground with a slippery carpet,

So did the doomed freshers

Drop from that shore into the bark,

Lured by the siren song.

Off they go across the swamp waters,

And before they reach the opposite shore

A new crowd gathers on this side.

‘My friend,’ Berrigan said to me then,

‘Everyone who wants to get a degree

Gathers here, from all corners of the globe;

They want to cross the swamp, they are eager;

It is the fear of being left on the

Scrapheap that urges them on

Into debt and toil and hardship;

Only a fool would follow, so if Dr May

Warns you off, you see what he’s saying.’

As he finished, the ground shook with a violent

Tremor, as the Wivenhoe fault opened

Anew in the Palaeozoic rocks.

A whirlwind burst out of the cracked earth,

A wind that crackled like an electric storm;

It struck my body like a cattle prod

And as a man in Guantanamo Bay, I fell.

The crack of fiercely hit squash balls

Woke me from my blackout so that I started

Like one woken from a deep sleep

Or like some unfortunate commuter

Rising to the call of alarm-clock Britain;

Once on my feet I steadied myself

And saw from an illuminated sign

That I had been borne to a place called

Valley, though it more resembled a ditch;

The place thundered with endless wailing

Which issued from the Sports Hall, but when I

Put my face to the glass, I discerned nothing,

For it was all steamed up with sweat;

‘It’s time to begin our descent into the

Blind world below,’ said Berrigan, his face

All pale, and I, who saw his complexion,

For even his beard could not hide it, asked

‘How will I cope, when even you’re afraid,

Who art wont to be my strength in doubt?’

And he spoke back: ‘It’s the misery of the

Fuck-ups here below which paints my face with

That pity which you mistake for fear;

Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow

Of Death, I shall fear no evil – for I am

A lot more insane than this Valley.

Now, let’s get moving, the journey is long.’

He stepped forward then, leading the way for me,

Towards our next port of call. As we advanced

Along a straight track, no wailing could be heard,

Only the sound of sighs coming from

A vast car park, where none of the vehicles

Could be moved for all had been clamped,

Sighs that rose from grief without torment.

Berrigan then said: ‘If you want to know

What kind of souls these are that surround you,

I’ll let you in on their secret: they are all

Essex Alumni, Honorary PhDs,

And retired academics: here they live

Forever, but because they have left the

University,

                        they are forever

Deprived                      of their departments.

Without hope, they live on in desire.

There’s a joke going round campus which sums

Up their plight: “Academics never retire,

They just lose their faculties.”’

‘My God,’ I said, ‘you mean they’re stuck here

Forever in Limbo? Are there none that

Manage to get away from here?’

‘Not many,’ he said, ‘but occasionally,

When the VC raises the retirement age,

Say, you hear of a lucky few

Who find re-employment in one of our

Partner Colleges: Colchester Institute,

University Campus Suffolk, Writtle College.’

We didn’t stop to dawdle while we spoke

But made our way onwards, past a wood.

We had not gone far from where I woke

When I made out a fire burning up ahead,

Which lit up a hemisphere in the darkness.

We were still some distance from it,

But we were close enough for me to begin

To make out some of the shades up there.

‘Berrigan,’ I said, ‘who are these souls

Who seem to occupy some place of special

Honour, set apart from the rest?’

And Berrigan, my guide: ‘Their honoured

Names, which still resound in the world of

The living, gain them favour here.

They are poets who once taught here,

Or studied, rare souls,

                 who had the gift of sabi.’

And as he talked I heard a voice exclaim:

‘Honour the poet of the New York School!

His shade returns that was departed!’

As the voice fell silent, I saw eight

Shades step towards us, with an aspect

Neither sad nor joyful.

The good master began: ‘Mark him

With the Havana cigar clenched in his teeth,

Who walks steadily at the head of the pack,

That’s Robert Lowell, the illustrious poet,

Who was once a professor here, in the

70s; the next, just behind him, is

The satirist, Ed Dorn; then look, that stately

Figure with the handlebar moustache is

Tom Raworth, who wrote his
Logbook

When he was here, but of course, you’ve met
them
;

Next is Doug Oliver, who descended into

The caves at Winnats Pass to write his epic;

Behind him there’s Elaine Feinstein,

Jeremy Reed, who was a student here,

Tony Lopez and Kelvin Corcoran.’

As we drew level with them, they came

To greet Berrigan, and after they had

Talked a while, they turned towards me,

Welcoming me with a gesture, and when

I turned to gaze at Berrigan I saw him smile.

We walked together,

Talking of this and that, until we reached

The boundary of a splendid villa,

Set in a sweet vale all by itself.

It was circled by a security fence,

Bounded by woodland and a clear lake,

And once we had passed through seven

Surveillance gates, like those at Stansted,

We stepped onto a brightly lit lawn.

On it were shades with eyes slow

And grave; they were of great authority

In their demeanour, speaking slowly,

With mild voices. Then moving to one side

In unison, to where the cocktails were

Being handed out, we stepped onto a

Raised veranda, from where they could all be seen.

From this vantage point, as he lit a cigarette,

Berrigan pointed out the illustrious

Shades who peopled the verdant pasture.

There was Charles Leatherland, standing with a group,

Amongst whom was Óscar Arias, the

Nobel Prize Winner, and Dimitrij Rupel,

Foreign Minister of Slovenia.

I saw too Virginia Bottomley,

John Bercow and Siobhain McDonagh,

And when I looked up a little I saw

The master of thought, Simon Critchley,

Chatting away with his philosophical crowd,

Who were hanging on his every word;

I spotted, too, Richard Bartle and Roy

Trubshaw, co-creators of the Multi-User

Dungeon, MUD1, and Rodolfo Vela,

Mexico’s first astronaut; then, cracking jokes,

In a way that made them stand out from the crowd,

I saw Nick Broomfield and Mike Leigh, Stephen

Daldry, Lucy Ellmann and Ben Okri,

Who won the Booker Prize.

I can’t paint them all in full, as they deserve,

My theme is long, and many times the words

Must fall short of the reality.

The company of ten diminishes to two.

Berrigan leads me by another path,

Out of the quiet, into the trembling air.

I come to a part where there is no light.