‘Give Col a bonus! Give Col a bonus!’
The voice of Mervyn King spat out these words,
And Berrigan, my guide,
Whispered: ‘Don’t let him freak
You out, he’s a powerful mother,
But he can’t stop our campus tour.’
Then he turned towards that bloated countenance,
Saying, ‘Shut it, moneybags,
Feed on last night’s oysters that rot your guts,
This tour of your wretched kingdom
Has Dean’s approval, and funding
from the AHRC.’
As sails, swollen by wind, collapse
when the yacht’s mast snaps,
So the savage beast collapsed before our eyes,
And then we started up those slippery steps,
Past wasted students stopped for a smoke,
that led to Square 4.
Who could imagine misery
as strange as I saw here,
Like something out of Dalí.
As a speeding car on the road loses its
Grip on the tarmac, spinning into a stream of
Oncoming traffic, so these folk danced the conga;
More sinners were here than anywhere below
And from both sides, to the piercing cry of their
Screams, chests stuck out, they rolled giant coins,
And when they clashed against each other they
Turned to push the other way, one bunch yelling
‘What’s the point in saving?’, the other bunch
‘Take out an ISA!’ And so they whirled round
A grooved circle of pale concrete, like a
Treadmill, some retreating as far as Barclays,
Some sheltering near the Abbey. Then once more
They clash and turn and roll in their circular joust.
And I, shaken by such a sight,
Turned to Berrigan, my guide: ‘Tell me, master,
Who are these wretched souls?
Were they all moneylenders?’
He said: ‘Up above, the souls
you see here
had such myopic minds
They could not judge with moderation
when it came to money. The ones
with nothing on top were loan-sharks,
Or managed Building Societies, amassing fortunes,
While whole generations went to the wall
struggling to pay back mortgages.’
‘Ted,’ I said, ‘if I may, I reckon
I should be able to recognise a few of these,
Not least the shit who sold me shares in Gartmore,
Just before the Credit Crunch.’
And he replied: ‘Dream on, buddy,
The undistinguished life
of these moneygrubbers
That made them slaves to cash,
Now makes it hard to tell them apart.
Squandering and hoarding robbed them
Of any life, enlisting them in this scrum,
What more can I say?
Here you see the short-lived mockery
Of Capital,
for which men bicker and connive.
As Dylan said: “All the money
you made
will never buy back your soul.”’
‘This Capital you speak of,
what is it,
that has the world so in its clutches?’
And he replied: ‘People are mugs,
things of real value,
friendship, love,
Poetry, health,
they ride over roughshod
for a slice of Capital’s cake.
Commodity fetishism rules the day
drowning us in a sea of white goods
and smart gadgets,
Online markets transfer empty futures
through time and space
beyond all human wit to tell.
One state grows fat with power,
another lean,
according to Capital’s law
Which (like a snake in the grass) cannot
be seen.
Nothing human can touch it,
Capital divides
and rules its kingdom
Like a greedy spoilt dictator.
Its changing changes never rest,
Now in houses, now in arms, gold, wheat,
Beef, rice, diamonds, manganese,
Tumbling markets keep it constantly
in motion, as investors come and go,
glad to be part of the ride.
But now let us go on to greater sorrow
night is coming
we’ve no time to lose.’
We crossed Square 4 to the other side,
Past Happy Days, where tomato ketchup spills
Into a trench formed by its overflow;
That stream was darker than blood
And we, accompanied by that shadowy sauce,
Moved down along a strange path.
When it has reached the foot of a
Grey slope, that melancholy stream descends,
forming a black lake.
And I, peering into its depths,
Could make out muddied students in that slime
Totally naked and their faces mad.
They struck each other not only with hands,
But with their heads and chests and feet,
And tore each other apart with knives.
Berrigan, my guide, said: ‘These are the
Souls of Greek and Turkish MA students
Who war on campus after dark,
Full of hate and anger; and beneath
The surface there are arts students
Whose sighs make the bubbles you can see.
Wedged in the slime they say: “We were lazy
Sods and never turned up for lectures;
Most of the time we were completely stoned,
Now we are lazy sods in the black mud.”
This is the dirge they gurgle in their throats,
They can’t even get their words out properly.’
And so, across the water,
we circled that disgusting pond
Our eyes glued to the slime swallowers.
We came, at last, to a tower’s base.