[The second half of the 4th Katabasis section of 64, still channeled through Padraig’s drunken dream world, focuses on the character of Dido, who has, much to the delight of the other residents of Hell, now become a religious extremist. This section contains a seemingly flippant description of a terrorist attack that some readers may find upsetting. The section ends with Padraig disappearing into the oblivion of London-town homelessness and taking all the ‘secondary’ characters from the ekphrasis/katabasis sections (Dido, Ariadne, Theseus etc.) away with him. It concludes with another poem within a poem, The River Biss, which is the only part written entirely in my own voice.]

 

(18)

Padraig stands staggeringly to the strident strains of the Irish national anthem

they play at lunchtime chucking out time here

and toasts the bombers of the IRA with his last call.

Spends the afternoon shouting at ducks in the park:

“If ye dunna wan’ me fucking crumbs of bread ye can fuckin’ fuck off!”

Beds down on a park bench, the winter sun setting over his rosy cheeks.

“What was it happened to that Dido babe now?

Got God in hell.”

 

(19)

Soon enough, Dido is strapped up

with semtex under her burqa and bra

and sent back up in the elevator

to a tourist resort.

“Not many get a chance like this,” screws hiss.

“Not since Eurydice. We wanted that Orpheus’s head off.

Fucking poet! Fucking ponce! That Lorca. That Pasolini.

Them too. Make sure you don’t fuck up.”

The elevator creaks upwards revealing the light of the sky

seeping through the cracks. Dido bends in prayer.

 

(20)

Dido’s Hymn to Friday

‘Freya’s day. Frigga’s day. The day of love.

Women’s day. The day Jews scurry off

for their lazy Sabbath at the sight of a single star;

the day Christians knock off work

to enjoy an extra day on the beach debauching

and fighting on the football terraces.

Saturn’s day. Day of Death. Before returning

to worship a pagan god in their hypocritical churches

and cut up sacrificial beasts for lunch.

The Sun on Sunday. News of the World. They work

at their adulterous summer holidays, while we bow down in prayer.

Friday. The day I was born. Freya’s day. The day

of love and respect for women and the oppressed

non-European peoples of this world.

Friday’s child is loving and giving. My time to give love has come.’

 

(21)

“Next thing she knows, there are bloodied body parts

and bits of a bus all over the place and she is back in hell

with the screws all high-fiving her. Job well done.”

 

(22)

Uncle Padraig jolts out of his slumber. Night has fallen over London.

“Fuck! What kind of a dream was that? And I fucking pissed meself again!”

He weaves his way through the city, dodging anything that looks like police.

 

(23)

A passing drunk sings a song about his home town.

 

The River Biss

‘They call it Biss.

As if there were some joke in there

about never being able to step into it twice

or the L having long since dropped out.

Paradise lost.

*

Biss runs between concrete banks

along a concrete bed

around the Gateway Supermarket,

a car park, and the old cotton mill

no-one yet has bothered to pull down.

*

And you can

follow it along the concrete riverwalk

interspersed with newly planted trees

up or down stream.

*

Down to the run-down factory and the park

to ply the ducks with crumbs

or steer a toy boat about

with a remote control on the stagnant pond

or pay respect to the bird-crap wreathed

copper monument to the war dead,

worn greenish blue by acid rain,

*

Or upstream to the railway station

to catch your train out of town,

to the tune of pigs led to slaughter

and the smell of pork pies

wafting from the butcher’s shop nearby.

*

Biss runs through the blood

& it’s no wonder a punk girl now and then

harms herself with a razor-blade

to let the poison out.

It’s no wonder the streets are littered

with bodies, heads in plastic bags,

amidst discarded tubes of glue.

*

Attachment

needs a super-strong adhesive these days,

and lies only a spot of shoplifting,

a shady DIY shop counter,

or a dealer’s cool leather jacket pocket

away…

*

A church squashed between shops

is clogged with zonked out punks.

Cripples hobble hopeless and homeless

through pedestrianized zones.

*

‘There we all go,’ we think,

‘but for God’s grace, perhaps,

or a giro from the DWP.’