As we made our way along the steep bank,
Bordering the river of blood,
We passed through a second wood, and when we
Emerged, we found ourselves in a place
Where the burning
flakes of flame
Fell fiercer than ever.
Distant, I could hear the clanking of some
Infernal engine, like the banging that
Car mechanics make, when three shades together,
Running, broke away
from a group toasting on the sands.
They veered towards us and, shouting as one, cried:
‘You there! Stop!’ Then one of them added as
Coda: ‘From the look of you, you’re from New York –
I’d recognise that face anywhere!’
As they drew closer, what wounds I saw
By the flames burned in –
It pains me yet, as I write these lines.
My teacher listened to their cries, then
Turning towards me, said: ‘Hold it;
These guys deserve a little respect.
In fact, if it weren’t for those burning flakes
Raining down over the sands, I’d suggest
You ran to greet them, not vice versa.’
We stopped, as they came up to the foot of the bank,
Where they stopped too, forming themselves into
A wheel;
It made me think of Matisse’s dancers
Whirling in a ring,
As if they were trying to make of their lives,
Of their deaths,
a work of high art.
Spinning around in this way, each one
Flung his head towards us as he whizzed past
So that their necks and feet appeared
To move constantly in opposite directions.
As they continued spinning, one of them began:
‘Ted Berrigan, it’s been a long time!
If the misery of these sterile sands
And our blotched and scorched demeanour
Doesn’t scare you off, talk to us a while;
And you there, who seem to be a living shade,
Walking unpunished through these torrid zones,
Let our fame persuade you to tell us who you are.
He in whose footsteps you see me tread,
All naked and peeling though he is now,
Was of noble station, more than you may know;
He was the grandson of the physicist,
Henry Lawrence, his name’s John Ashbery,
And in his lifetime he did much as an
Editor, teacher and writer.
The other one, that treads the sand behind me,
Is Joe Brainard, who left the world
His memories to read. I’m James Schuyler,
You’ll find me in New American Poetry,
I’m the one who taught these two to dance.’
If it hadn’t been for the burning sand
I’d have run down the bank to greet them;
As things were, I stood awestruck on the track.
Berrigan, my guide, then spoke:
‘That’s some dance you’ve got there, James,
Where did you pick that one up,
Is it Italian? This dude is another
Poet, I’m taking him on a tour of Hell,
He’s got AHRC funding –
That’s like having a Fulbright Scholarship.’
‘Is that so?’ said Schuyler, ‘Now, tell us about
New York, Ted, we were just talking about it.
David Plante, who recently joined our party,
Says it’s gone to the dogs. What’s the news?’
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.