It sawed the waves

more deeply than it would with other crews.

    So, rushing forwards on that lifeless slick,

there jerked up, fronting me, one brimming slime

who spoke: ‘So who – you come too soon! – are you?’

    And my riposte: ‘I come, perhaps; I’ll not remain.

But who might you be, brutishly befouled?’

His answer was: ‘Just look at me. I’m one

    who weeps.’ And I to him: ‘Weep on. In grief,

may you remain, you spirit of damnation!

I know who you are, filth as you may be.’

    And then he stretched both hands towards our gunwales.

My teacher, though – alert – soon drove him back,

saying: ‘Get down! Be off with all that dog pack!’

    And then he ringed both arms around my neck.

He kissed my face, then said: ‘You wrathful soul!

Blessed the one that held you in her womb.

    That man, alive, flaunted his arrogance,

and nothing good adorns his memory.

So here his shadow is possessed with rage.

    How many, in the world above, pose there

as kings but here will lie like pigs in muck,

leaving behind them horrible dispraise.’

    ‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘this I should really like:

before we make our way beyond this lake,

to see him dabbled in the minestrone.’

    He gave me my answer: ‘Before that shore

has come to view, you’ll surely have your fill.

And rightly you rejoice in this desire.’

    Then, moments on, I saw that sinner ripped

to vicious tatters by that mud-caked lot.

I praise God still, and still give thanks for that.

    ‘Get him,’ they howled. ‘Let’s get him – Silver Phil!’

That crazy Florentine! He bucked, he baulked.

Turning, the Guelf turned teeth upon himself.

    We left him there. Of him, my story tells no more.

And yet my ears were pierced with cries of pain.

At which, I barred my eyes intently forwards.

    ‘Dear son,’ my teacher in his goodness said,

‘we now approach the city known as Dis,

its teeming crowds and weighty citizens.’

    ‘Already, sir,’ I said, ‘I clearly can

make out the minarets beyond this moat,

as bright and red, it seems, as if they sprang

    from fire.’ ‘Eternal fire,’ he answered me,

‘burning within, projects, as you can see,

these glowing profiles from the depths of Hell.’

    We now arrived within the deep-dug ditch –

the channel round that place disconsolate,

whose walls, it seemed to me, were formed of iron.

    Not without, first, encircling it about,

we came to where the ferry man broke forth:

‘Out you all get!’ he yelled. ‘The entry’s here.’

    I saw there, on that threshold – framed – more than

a thousand who had rained from Heaven. Spitting

in wrath. ‘Who’s that,’ they hissed, ‘who, yet undead,

    travels the kingdom of the truly dead?’

He gave a sign, my teacher in all wisdom,

saying he sought some secret word with them.

    At which they somewhat hid their fierce disdain.

‘You come, but on your own!’ they said. ‘Let him,

so brazen entering our realm, walk by.

    He may retrace his foolish path alone –

or try it, if he can – while you’ll stay here.

You’ve been his escort through this dark terrain.’

    Reader, imagine! I grew faint at heart,

to hear these cursed phrases ringing out.

I truly thought I’d never make it back.

    ‘My guide, my dearest master. Seven times –

or more by now – you’ve brought me safely through.

You’ve drawn me from the face of towering doom.

    Do not, I beg you, leave me here undone.

If we are now denied a clear way on,

then let us quickly trace our footsteps back.’

    My lord had led me onwards to that place –

and now he said: ‘Do not be terrified.

No one can take from us our right to pass.

    Wait here a while. Refresh your weary soul.

Take strength. Be comforted. Feed on good hope.

I’ll not desert you in this nether world.’

    So off he went. He there abandoned me,

my sweetest father. Plunged in ‘perhapses’,

I so remained, brain arguing ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

    What he then said to them I could not tell.

Yet hardly had he taken up his stand

when all ran, jostling, to return inside.

    They barred the door, these enemies of ours,

to meet his thrust. My lord remained shut out.

With heavy tread, he now came back to me.

    Eyes bent upon the ground, his forehead shaved

of all brave confidence, sighing, he said:

‘Who dares deny me entrance to this house of grief?’

    To me he said: ‘You see. I’m angry now.

Don’t be dismayed. They’ll fuss around in there.

They’ll seek to keep us out. But I’ll win through.

    This insolence of theirs is nothing new.

At some less secret gate they tried it once.

But that still stands without its lock, ajar.

    You’ve seen the door, dead words scribed on its beam.

And now already there descends the slope –

passing these circles, and without a guide –

    someone through whom the city will lie open.’

Canto XIII

THE VIOLENT AGAINST SELF

    No, Nessus had not reached the other side

when we began to travel through a wood

that bore no sign of any path ahead.

    No fresh green leaves but dismal in colour,

no boughs clean arc-ed but knotty and entwined,

no apples were there but thorns, poison-pricked.

    No scrubby wilderness so bitter and dense

from Cécina as far as Corneto

offers a den to beasts that hate ploughed farmlands.

    Their nest is there, those disgusting Harpies

who drove the Trojans from the Strophades,

with grim announcements of great harm to come.

    Wings widespreading, human from neck to brow,

talons for feet, plumage around their paunches,

they sing from these uncanny trees their songs of woe.

    Constant in kindness, my teacher now said:

‘Before you venture further in, please know

that you now stand in Sub-ring Number Two,

    and shall until you reach the Appalling Sands.

So look around. Take care. What you’ll see here

would drain belief from any word I uttered.’

    A wailing I heard, dragged out from every part,

and saw there no one who might make these sounds,

so that I stopped, bewildered, in my tracks.

    Truly I think he truly thought that, truly,

I might just have believed these voices rose

from persons hidden from us in the thorn maze.

    Therefore: ‘If you,’ my teacher said, ‘will wrench

away some sprig from any tree you choose,

that will lop short your feeling in such doubt.’

    And so I reached my hand a little forwards.

I plucked a shoot (no more) from one great hawthorn.

At which its trunk screamed out: ‘Why splinter me?’

    Now darkened by a flow of blood, the tree

spoke out a second time: ‘Why gash me so?

Is there no living pity in your heart?

    Once we were men. We’ve now become dry sticks.

Your hand might well have proved more merciful

if we had been the hissing souls of snakes.’

    Compare: a green brand, kindled at one end –

the other oozing sap – whistles and spits

as air finds vent, then rushes out as wind.

    So now there ran, out of this fractured spigot,

both words and blood. At which I let the tip

drop down and stood like someone terror-struck.

    ‘You injured soul!’ my teacher (sane as ever)

now replied. ‘If he had only earlier

believed what my own writings could have shown,

    he’d not have stretched his hand so far towards you.

This, though, is all beyond belief. So I was forced

to urge a deed that presses on my own mind still.

    But tell him now who once you were. He may,

in turn, as remedy, refresh your fame,

returning to the world above by leave.’

    The trunk: ‘Your words, sir, prove so sweet a bait,

I cannot here keep silence. Don’t be irked

if I a while should settle on that lure and talk.

    I am the one who held in hand both keys

to Federigo’s heart. I turned them there,

locking so smoothly and unlocking it

    that all men, almost, I stole from his secrets.

Faith I kept, so true in that proud office

I wasted sleep and lost my steady pulse.

    That harlot Scandal, then (her raddled eyes

she never drags from where the emperor dwells,

the vice of court life, mortal blight of all)

    enflamed the minds of everyone against me.

And they in flames enflamed the great Augustus.

So, happy honours turned to hapless grief.

    My mind – itself disdainful in its tastes –

believing it could flee disdain by dying,

made me unjust against myself so just.

    By all these weird, new-wooded roots, I swear

on oath before you: I did not break faith,

nor failed a lord so worthy of regard.

    Will you – should either head back to the world –

bring comfort to my memory, which lies

still lashed beneath the stroke of envious eyes?’

    Pausing a while, he said (my chosen poet),

‘He’s silent now, so waste no opportunity.

If there is more you wish to know, then say.’

    ‘You,’ I replied, ‘must speak once more and ask

what you believe will leave me satisfied.

I could not do it. Pity wrings my core.’

    And so he did once more begin: ‘Suppose

that freely, from a generous heart, someone

should do, imprisoned ghost, what your prayers seek,

    tell us, if you should care to, this: how souls

are bound in these hard knots. And, if you can:

will anyone be ever loosed from limbs like these?’

    At that (exhaling heavily) the trunk

converted wind to word and formed this speech:

‘The answer you require is quick to give:

    When any soul abandons savagely

its body, rending self by self away,

Minos consigns it to the seventh gulf.

    Falling, it finds this copse.