The shade that spinelessness provoked in me,
Upon seeing my ruler turn back
He [was] more resilient [in] his restriction
Warily he halts like a man who listens
His eyes cannot guide him for long
Through the black air, the thick fog.
“Those who simply conquer are punished”
He began, “if not…if such offers.
Oh how much I’m delayed by what comes here!”
Yes, I saw well how it was covered, woe!
He began with the other – what then came,
-- what steals words to them is first different.
But alas! His words struck fear into me
As I contemplated the worst from that he told me.
“Into the bottom of this melancholy [pit]”
“Does anyone ever descend from the first [level]
Whose only pain
Is the deprivation of future hope?”
This question that I’m proposing – we find strange.
My reply is that we face the path
The same way that I faced it.
To see other breath down her, raw –
Conjured by Eriton
Recalled shadows [found] on the body
Little has affected the aging of my flesh,
I’ve been forced to enter into a wall,
And draw a spirit out of the circle of Judas
I am obligated to [that spirit] but is unclear to me
It’s farther from heaven than any other [that] travel
I know [that] road well [while] you are unsure
That very smell coils in this swamp
The swan returns to [this] painful town,
[A town] we [can’t] enter without seeing anger.
So others say to not [think of that thing]
That [had drawn my eye]
Towards the tall tower to the burning top.
After a point, we came around straight to a rape:
The three hell-like furies – the color of blood,
that had feminine limbs and ways,
And [the walls] had green hydras:
Small serpents and wax [for] hair,
They were fascinated by the waves of the fair temples
And those that well knew the unkindness
[of] the queen,suffer forever
“Look at” I said, “the fierce ones.”
“This is Megeara, singing from the left
[The one] who cries from the right, is Alledo
Tisiphone lies in the middle, and is [mostly] silent
With each nail cutting through her chest,
Beating [their] palms, and they [at this height]
[Suspiciously] press the poet
“Come, Medusa! We will make [the poet into] enamel”
All of them shouted, looking downward again,
“His onslaught in Teseo did not come.”
Turn yourself [around] and keep your eyes closed
[For] if the Gorgon show herself and you see it,
Nothing of you would [ever return]
Therefore, I want the master to stay
And not to hold onto my hands
And who with her anchor, does not withdraw into me.
You who have a calm intellect,
[Are able to] see the concealed doctrine
Under the veil of [these] strange verses.
And there came across the turbid waves,
The absence of sound – [conjuring] terror within
For which both of [our] sides trembled.
It was not [a wave], but of a wind
One so dangerous thos these doubtful journeys;
A wind which whips the forest without any regret
Branches break; it beats [them down]
In front of your dusty door
It goes proud and fair; shepherds flee them.
His eyes melted me and he said,
“Make straight the nerve of your vision upon that
Ancient foam, from when that smoke is most sharp.”
As the frogs, in front of the adverse
Grass snake, disperse all through the water
Finally each [snake] stacks itself into the earth
[So] I saw more than a thousand destroyed spirits
Tryin in vain to escape one who stepped
Over the Stygian River softly and remained dry.
From his face he brushed away disgusting air,
Often waving his left hand
With a wearing expression full of anguish.
[Well I] noticed that she was a messenger from Heaven,
And [I] turned to the teacher and made a sign
And [I] bowed quietly to him
“Alas, how you appear to me full of disdain!”
[We] came to the gate
And it opened for it had no containment
O hunted of heaven! [O] spited people
[At] this horrible threshold I begin –
[While] it entices other options in you.
It pertains to what you want
To which your end can never be
In [these] times the [pains of labor] have grown
What does it [matter] to collide like a fairy into [the god] Jupiter?
[The god] Cerberus, if you quite remember,
Still carries [his] throat out in the open
For [the poet] turned towards the muddy road,
And spoke little of words, but [yet] mentioned
Her – the one that Matters
That one who is in their presence
And next, we move our feet towards the earth,
Secure in [her] holy words
Inside the sacnction of any war
And I found in [those words]
The condition of the closed fortress
began to look about the very moment
we were inside, and I saw on every hand
a countryside of sorrow and new torment
As at Arles where the rhone sinks into stagnant marshes,
as at Pola by the Quarnaro Gulf, whose waters
close Italy and wash her farthest reaches,
Sepulchres [of steel] make [a] place uneven
So they did here --
Unless your manner is [even] more bitter
[Than they]
Between the flames they were divided
For them, that was the fate of all who entered
No art requires more iron.
All of [these coffins] had lids suspended over them
And around hell there were lingering complaints
Which appeared wretched and offensive
And I said, “Master, who are those people
That buried inside those coffins,
Themselves feel a painful sigh?”