The same tongue that spoke in anger – stinging
Me so that blood filled the capillaries in my cheeks –
Supplied the Savlon for my wound,
Just as, or so I have read in old books,
The lance bequeathed to Achilles by his father
Could heal the injuries it inflicted.
We turned our backs to the wretched trench,
Climbing to the top of the bank which girds it round,
Then we crossed back over the bridge
And Berrigan led me across the square
And out of Zone 8 into Zone 9,
Whose border was marked by a pole bearing a sign.
‘These poles,’ said Berrigan, ‘serve a double purpose,
For in the event of fire or other emergencies,
They serve as Assembly Points; this one serves
The Lecture Theatre Block, and some of the labs.’
As he spoke, he pointed out the labs
With his finger, then added:
‘When the alarm goes off it’s something else –
Because it has to be heard over the voices
Of the scholars delivering their lectures
And since, in addition, it has to be sure
To wake up any students who have dropped off
It has a special sonic frequency
Which can penetrate concrete and the thickest skull.
The technology was pioneered right here
On this campus, they call it Roland 2.’
It was pretty dark where we were standing
And as I cast my eye about in the gloom I
Seemed to see a host of giants closing in
On us. ‘What’s up with Goliath and Co.?’
I asked, and Berrigan, my guide, said:
‘You’ve got it wrong, partner, these aren’t giants,
They’re towers; the original plan was to
Include a lot more than there are now
As well, but let’s get a little closer,
So you can see for yourself.’ As when
Dry-ice lifts, the eye little by little reshapes
What till then the air-crowding vapour hides,
So, as my eye pierced that darksome air,
Drawing closer to these edifices,
My confusion began to clear too.
Just as at Montereggione, the
Round wall is crowned with high towers,
So the round hill here was dotted with tower blocks.
‘Here,’ said Berrigan, ‘you see the ambition,
But ultimately, too, the failure, of
Modernism – the uniformity
And functionalism first advocated
By the likes of Le Corbusier,
The so-called “international style”,
See their apotheosis in these towers.
But as Jencks later saw, these
Monstrous structures were ultimately
Uninhabitable – they filled up with
Low-lifes and drug users until the point
Was reached where they had to be given the
Coup de grace by dynamite –
Which as Jencks puts it marks the death of
Modernist architecture.’
As we drew close to one of the towers
I could make out one of the faces at a window,
A student who appeared to be off his head,
And as we passed by he cried out
What sounded to me like total gibberish:
‘Rafa! Maya! Make me shabby! All me!’
‘That dude,’ said Berrigan, ‘kind of makes the point.
He’s like Nimrod, the one who built the Tower of Babel;
After the building of that structure
He lost the power of speech, just as the earth
Lost a common tongue – of course, that’s just myth,
But it kind of explains one of the problems
With the modernist block – the overwhelming scale
Ultimately leads to a breakdown in
Communication amongst communities.’
We strolled on along a rising track
Until the towers lay behind us,
Then I saw up ahead a low circle of
Buildings, built from pale brick, with little
Balconies overlooking an area of grass.
They were brighter and much less
Intimidating than the towers I
Had mistaken for giants, and I asked Berrigan:
‘Who lives within these blocks, are they reserved
For the graduate students, or visiting
Professors? They certainly look like
An improvement on the towers.’
‘Those are the South Courts,’ he said, ‘I think
Anyone can stay there – it’s just a lottery
Whether you end up here or in the towers.
But you’re right, apart from the building work
That’s still going on, which you’ll see in a minute,
It’s a more user-friendly place to live – in that sense,
As well as the nod to past architecture,
I mean, it’s a bit like a Georgian crescent,
It represents a more postmodern
Approach to building in Jencks’ sense:
It’s what he calls double-coded, at once
Old and new, popular and elitist.’
We kept on walking all this while,
And by the time Berrigan had stopped talking
We had arrived at a security gate,
Which blocked our path. A notice in red
Stated: ANTEUS SECURITY:
RESTRICTED ACCESS. Berrigan went up to
The window of the Portakabin:
‘We’re on a campus tour,’ he said, ‘we’d like
To visit Zone 9, Areas A–D.’
‘Sorry mate,’ came the voice from within,
‘Authorised personnel only.’
‘This trip has AHRC funding,’ said Berrigan,
‘And Dean’s approval.’ ‘That’s what they all say,’
Said the security guard, ‘I’ll need to
See your ID if you claim you’ve got clearance.’
Berrigan handed him some documents
Which he began to leaf through suspiciously.
‘Is this one living?’ he asked, sounding surprised.
‘Sure is,’ said Berrigan. ‘Well, that’s a first!’
Said the guard. He began to type something
Into his computer, and Berrigan lit a smoke.
Eventually, he looked up, smiling, and said:
‘You’re in,’ at which point the gate clicked open
And he took us inside, handing us a couple
Of hard hats. ‘You’ll need to put that cigarette
Out, guv’nor,’ he said, ‘inflammable material.’
Berrigan took a last, long drag, then stubbed it
On the ground, as the guard led us towards
The edge of a huge pit dug into the earth
In the centre of the ring of flats.
‘It may just look like a massive hole in
The ground to you, mate,’ he said, ‘but this
Here is the future of student accommodation.
When it’s finished, there’ll be a whole city
Down there, Cocytus Campus we call it,
All the flats come with wi-fi and en suite,
And the whole lot’s carbon neutral as well.’
We were now standing at the yellow
Barrier which circumnavigated
The rim of the pit. Peering over the edge
I could see nothing, so deep and dark it seemed;
‘If you’re wanting to go down,’ the guard said,
Pointing at a kind of cage on a pulley,
Like those used to clean the outside of glass buildings,
‘This is the only way. I’ll leave you here.’
At that Berrigan fastened his hard hat
And stepped into the unsteady contraption,
Pulling me in beside him. The guard shut the gate,
Then pressed a button. Slowly we began our descent.