Regaining now my senses, which had zoned out
At the sight of that old roué
and his student
New wretchedness and new sinners retching
I see, wherever I move,
wherever I look.
I am in the sewer that is Square 3,
Fast food joints all around me,
Knee-deep in chip cartons and half-chewed kebabs;
Men in boiler suits hose it with jet sprays,
The dirty water fills the air, like Irish mist,
The stink never leaves the place.
There’s a stoner wearing dreads and
A filthy poncho, with a three-headed
bulldog on a frayed bit of string,
The dog’s six eyes are bloodshot, the three mouths
Black, the three bellies swollen, ribs poking out –
It’s like something out of Harry Potter.
Spilling from Food on 3 and the SU bar,
Hung-over students howl like mutts
slipping and sliding in the filth.
When the slimy hound got a sniff of us,
He pulled on the leash, snarling,
showing his fangs.
Berrigan, my guide, bent down slowly,
Without taking his eyes off the beast, and,
spreading wide his wiry fingers,
Shovelled up a fistful of spewed-up sausage
And beans, flinging it down those
gawping gullets.
As a famished hound, hungering to
Be fed, quiets down when you bring out the Bonzo,
So the filthy heads now ceased their barking.
We walked across this slippery square
Of shades squirming in the soup,
When one of them sat up suddenly:
‘You there, on a tour of Hell’s diners,’
He beckoned, ‘do you not remember my face,
For you were born before I expired.’
I said: ‘It may be the torments you
suffer have disfigured you,
I can’t put a name to your face,
But my memory is not
What it was
tell me who you are.’
‘Your own city,’ he said, ‘so full of hate
It overflows the pan,
Once held me in the fresh air above.
Your people called me Round Nick
And I’m damned
for always stuffing my fat face,
All the bodies flattened here
Share in my sin
and in my pain.’
‘Nick,’ I said to him, ‘I recall you now,
And your sad suffering makes me weep,
But tell me what’ll happen, if you can,
To the people of that divided state,
And are there any honest men among them?
And tell me, why is it so fucked up?’
‘Some blame the Act of Union, some Kitty O’Shea,
Some the Brits, some the Prods, some the IRA,
but sheer bigotry has played its
Part, coupled with sectarianism
And lust for power. Who knows
when the violence will run its course?
There are honest men, but no-one wants to know,
For pride and hate and envy are the three
Tunes the Orangemen sing,
They kindle in men’s hearts, and set them ablaze.’
With this his dirge ended, but I answered:
‘Tell me more, what of
Rowlands, and Trimble, who had such good
Intentions, Cathal Goulding,
Michael Farrell, and the rest,
Bent on doing good? Where are they?
Do they taste Heaven’s sweetness
or Hell’s tandoori?’
‘Some taste Heaven’s sweetness, others lie
Below with blacker souls. If you keep on,
You may see them still. I speak no more.’
He twisted his great head towards me
And eyed me a moment,
Then rolled beneath the scum.
Berrigan, my guide, then spoke:
‘He’ll wake no more till Donald Davie
Blows his shrill whistle,
Then the dead souls will put on
Flesh once more,
and face their viva voce.’
And so we splashed through the filth
Of goners and doners,
Talking a little of the afterlife.
I said: ‘Master, will these torments be increased,
Or lessened, on Finals’ Day,
Or will the misery remain the same?’
And Berrigan: ‘Remember your theory;
The more a thing is subject to deconstruction,
As Derrida says, the more monstrous
Its pleasure, or its pain.’ We
Talked of Foucault, and punishment,
And Ginsters, till we came to a steep bank;
There we found Mervyn King, man’s arch-enemy.