According to myth, Juno was once so
Enraged against the Thebans over Semele,
That she made King Athamas go insane,
So insane, that when he saw his wife
Stepping towards him, with a child in each hand,
He cried out: ‘Spread the nets,
That I may trap the lioness and her cubs
At the pass!’ And then he spread out his
Crazy hands as if he were the net,
Grabbed one of his sons and battered his brains
Out against a rock. She drowned herself
with the other one.
And when Adam Ant, fresh out of the nuthouse,
Thought someone was threatening his daughter,
He lost it completely
Put a brick through the window of
The Dick Turpin, and pulled out a blunderbuss
(For he is a keen collector of antiques);
As the police dragged him off, now out of his mind,
They say he began to howl, like a dog.
The thought of going back inside snapped his mind.
But never in Thebes or London did you see
Crazies as ferocious as the two naked shades
I saw now as I looked back into the ditch:
They charged about madly like wild boar
When hunted, snarling and snapping
At anything in their path.
One, crashing into the comedian,
Fixed his incisors on his neck-joint, dragging
Him off so that his belly was flayed by the tarmac.
Trembling, where he now sat alone, the Kansan
Cried: ‘You see that crazed spirit? That’s Jonny Saatchi.
He used to do impressions in the SU Bar,
Then he earned a tidy sum sitting
Exams for the Chinese. He’s rabid!’
‘And what about the other one?’ I asked.
‘Shit,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to know.
That dude came here as a mature student
To study Biological Sciences,
Under Professor Pretty. He was a
Hardened drinker who got so wasted one night
That he shagged his own step-daughter,
She was in Myth Studies, a girl half his age.’
When the rabid pair, on whom I had kept
My eyes fixed, had run off
I shifted my gaze to look on the other
Ill-born spirits;
I saw one, a woman, shaped like a lute,
Except that she still walked on legs,
Like some creature out of Hieronymus Bosch.
Bloated by booze
Her body’s parts were disproportioned
By unconverted toxins,
So that her face was all shrunken and petite,
While her belly stuck out like a wide shelf,
Or like the prow of a ship,
And her swollen lips were folded back,
Parched and wide apart,
As those of a creature suffering from
A raging fever, craving a drop to drink.
‘Hello,’ she said, ‘what are you doing here,
Do I know you? And why are you walking
Around without any affliction?
I can’t think why you should. Hey?
Look carefully, and see the misery
Of Elaine Jordan. When I was still living
I had enough of what I wished. Ah!
And I don’t regret it at all, not for
One moment. But look at me now –
I crave one drop of water!
The little streams that run through the fields
In Dedham Vale, towards Willy Lott’s Cottage,
I can’t get them out of my head, they haunt
Me, making me like one of those worried spectres
In Tennyson’s poetry. Do you read Tennyson?
Those waters, their memory makes me far
More parched than this wasting disease.
I can still see Wivenhoe, where I learned
To get up at the crack of dawn
To shuffle up to the Co-op – that hill! –
So as to feed my habit.
Ah! If I could find those wretched dons
That taught me, making me dream,
So that I stayed up all night.
The misery of it. If I could lay my hands
On them, they’re here somewhere, I’m sure of it,
But these legs of mine won’t go far.
If I could cover a couple of yards a day,
And thought they were ten miles away,
I’d be off. But I can’t even manage that.’
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘who are those two spirits
Lying supine beside you,
Steaming like wet gloves in wintertime?’
‘These two? They were here already when I
Tumbled into this ditch, they haven’t stirred
Since and I doubt they ever will.
One of them is John Coombes, he’s so lazy
He never even bothered to turn up to
His own lectures. He was always
Finding some excuse to skive off work,
Leaving the poor students in the lurch,
Even in their final year. The other one
Was the Dean, a gifted linguist,
But not a real worker like me.’
Then one of the pair, perhaps disgruntled
By the introduction he was given,
Suddenly sat up and struck out with his fist
At the rigid belly. It sounded like a drum.
Then Elaine Jordan took a swing at him
With her arm, catching him on the jaw
With equal force, saying to him:
‘Though I can’t get about like I used to
I still have a steady arm when required!’
To which he snapped back: ‘But it wasn’t so steady
When you used to go out on the piss, was it?’
‘Get your hands off me, you old prophet!’
She yelled. ‘Go back to sleep!
You think yourself some grand academic,
But where are all those books you promised?
You’re nothing but a sham!’
I was engrossed in their wrangling
When Berrigan tugged me by the shoulder,
Saying: ‘Leave off,
You don’t want to get tied up in these old
Quarrels, you should know better.’
When I heard the anger in his voice
I turned scarlet through shame.
I felt like one in a dream,
Caught in a situation I wished to be out of,
Who, still dreaming, wishes it only a dream –
But I was not dreaming. ‘Forget it,’
Said Berrigan, ‘you don’t need to go there.
But if you meet up with this sort again,
Slagging each other off while Rome burns,
Just remember, I’m here for you. To develop
A taste for this kind of talk is dangerous.’