[The next two sections of 64 are entirely non-Catullan, in that they do not refer to anything that appears explicitly in the original, although they do still reflect its spirit a little. Section 4, entitled Katabasis (descent into hell), the first half of which (parts 11-17) I am posting today, imagines (still through the voice of the rhapsodic Uncle Padraig) Ariadne descending into hell (conceived as a sort of prison) and meeting up with Dido, former Queen of Carthage.

In Greco-Roman mythology, Dido and Ariadne share the dubious distinction of being the ditched foreign lovers of ‘heroes’ (Aeneas and Theseus) who went on, as myth would have it, to found ‘empires’ (the Roman and the Athenian respectively). In this first half of the Katabasis section, the empire-builders’ exes seem to find some kind of redemption together, albeit in the underworld.

I should again warn readers that deliberately vulgar and sexually explicit language yet again pervades this section, as it does the whole poem. This section also contains the perhaps more reader-friendly free-standing poem, Ariadne’s Ode to Thread, which I have already posted on this blog.]

 

KATABASIS

(11)

The doorstep has been Uncle Padraig’s pillow for the night

and his shoulder’s fucking killing him.

He brushes the dust off his wedding suit

and wanders off down the pub that should be open not too long from now

for a liquid Sunday lunch. “What was that story I was telling myself now?”

 

(12)

“& Ariadne slips away quietly in her sleep,

her fingers still clutching a vodka bottle to her breast like a baby,

as the elevator sinks down to hell.

And in hell, all the dealers and the pimps

are all over her,

because a new girl here is hot merchandise,

& a young one at that—a right cash-cow—

and she is steered into the cell where needs are met.

‘Best catch since Persephone’, surrounding shades coo.”

 

(13)

“No sooner she’s arrived than top-dog Dido is all over her too,

with curses and nails and tufts of hair all over

and a pair of scissors she has snuck out of the dressmaking shop.

And the screws—if they exist in Hell—

are on top of the pair of them

struggling to keep them apart

& they end up in adjoining solitary cells…

Dido screeching all night and bashing at the metal door

and pebble-dashed walls with a plastic tray,

as Ariadne sings quietly to herself.”

 

(14)

Ariadne’s Ode to Thread

‘I am not the path.

I am not the guide.

I’m not patient & not

the pattern of your life.

My foot taps to a speedier beat.

*

I am the Singer who plies

her Siren song in subtler thread.

*

I am not the cotton;

I am not the cut cloth.

I am neither sorceress

nor slave.

*

I am not your mother;

I am not your lover;

I am not the wicked witch.

*

I am a grown child

coming out of a maze;

nudging you.

*

I am not the doctor.

I am not the nurse.

I am not the disease.

*

I am the stitchwork

stretching out behind,

before and beyond you,

& the moment in which you pause.

I am time itself.

*

I am the entrance and the exit:

your first step, your way out.’

 

(15)

The Screws’ Chorus

“Who would take this job, if they didna have something to hide

or didna believe they really deserved to be here the best half of the day.

That Persephone gets the whole Spring to Summer holiday on work leave,

and conjugal visits to boot, while we scoop up the scum of the earth.

We screws come out only at sundown and spend our nights in bars,

drowning sorrows, calming the furies in us, picking up

pricks that turn out to be cunts by morning.

And, if, once in a while, one of us has some idea of redemption,

she is laughed off and away. We strike

but do not appear in party election manifestoes.

No-one votes for the likes of us.”

 

(16)

“A small flame licks over the underside of a teaspoon,

melting the drug. The queen slurps the liquid up

into a syringe & taps the bubbles out

& plunges it safely into a torniqueted obtruding vein,

pausing half way through to relish the rush,

then pushing the other bloodied half

of the delicious mixture into Ariadne’s thigh.

HIV can’t kill her here,

and the only bother with dying in Hell

is that you have to go through the check-in

and body search over and over, like suicides

and working girls do…

“An inferno in a teaspoon,” Ariadne giggles

druggily and gives the queen a sweet little kiss.

 

(17)

“Aggro over, the pair go down on one another,

as search-lights scan the night sky for drones.

Aeneas is busy wreaking havoc

across the Italian peninsula

& Theseus is working on a Constitution

& sowing seeds of internecine war;

Aeneas is courting pale Lavinia

to curry favor with her father,

while Theseus is off with his boys.

And the whole business of the unfurling of empires—

the bloodshed, the betrayals, the crucifixions,

the millions dead in the silver mines, the palace intrigues,

and the civil wars pass by

in an instant of eternity, as the two exes

slurp at each other’s sexes, lost in each other’s pleasure,

in a netherworld where there is no Athens and no Rome” …