(AA) Canto 72: Commedia
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One may gladly admit that the essential & undefinable quality that we call poetry, the quality of being poetical, is one of the eternal things in life. There is something in Homer & the Book of Job which cannot be superseded, any more than the beauty of a spring morning or the sea or a mother’s love for a child can be superseded
Gilbert Murray
Invocations
sometimes I talk in my sleep
funny how unconscious
I’m at my most awake
Megan Mccorquodale
I sat alone singing the Song of Man,
When every beating heart swam through mine own,
A swirl of swans sang in the summer’s van
& I, a sentinel on Zeus’s throne;
His vast robe flows
Before me like a flame,
As lovely as the rose Persophone became.
Strange lights & stranger sounds rang out
Above the global babble,
My spirit turning inside out,
The mage in me must dabble,
Assuaging all my deep-felt doubt,
‘Rise up from the rabble,’
& hope beyond all hope my soul may pass
The last oppression of the poet-class!
This is no simple shepherd’s song
Once sung in Sicily,
For right or wrong we bards belong
In stranger company,
Sat at the feet of godhead, pledg’d before infinity.
Mount Olympus
Poetic Meeting
Now (turned into a Man under obscure measures),
I feel within me the germs of future existences,
lives that shall rise and soar to find higher reaches
Juan Ramón Molina
Rose, from Poppi’s fields, enchanting accent,
“Dante Alighieri is my name,
Sent to attend poetical descent
Into the ovens of infernal flame!”
“Let it be so,
Let us retrace the ride
That was thine Inferno, when Virgil was thy guide.”
“Poet, thy path we have observ’d
From heavenly echelons,
How thro’ thy task ye have conserv’d
Man’s Wars & his raw weapons,
How ye wonder’d what hells reserv’d
For man’s evil actions –
For questions to be illuminated,
My mortal form here rejuvenated.”
The poet led me from the peak
Tho’ all seem’d in my mind –
Forest of teak, bent branches creak
Before us & behind,
Until we reach Hell’s opening by devil’s art design’d.
Ploutonion
Gates of Hell
lord lord
I have sinned and I confess it
but it isn’t really all my fault
Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala
‘ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE,’
Dante trembl’d once more before the gloom,
Then to nook-smitten depths did dissapear,
I join’d him as a robber stalks a tomb;
As deep distance
Echoes a frightful sound,
Sonambulants advance cautiously underground.
“Pray, Dante, stray not far from me,
As into Hades we go,”
Soon rose lung-black cacophony,
Emmuted groans of limbo,
By Acheron, glutting vile sea,
In stagnant, livid flow,
Where Charon waits to ferry fools & kings,
His haunted face bloated with hornet stings.
With old proverbs our pilot paid,
Who blinkless gave no thanks,
But silent stay’d, the boat obey’d,
Sliding tween fetid banks,
Scudding beside a sorry shore, rats scuttling on the planks.
First Circle of Hell
Ancyent Wisdom
Pardon will he obtain, who will call upon
God, and despise Him not,
And heaven the night he dies
St Eleath
Girdling circles of this infernal world
Spiral before us to a point unknown,
Thro womby vaultages shriek’d anguish swirl’d,
Like spinning pennies grating round a cone;
Souls shriek terror,
An angry nest of thieves,
Joyous, once, with honour now forced to fend for leaves.
Round stinkweed shrub a scrum did break,
Won by some toothless hoodlum,
Who gorged it down like it was steak –
Hermann Goering look’d on glum,
Who once had made Albion quake,
Turn’d London to a slum –
Now forced to bear, thro an eternal gloom,
Asthma, marasmus, spasm, qualm & rheum.
A whistle separates the drones,
Imps whip them back to work
Breaking great stones with vulture bones,
Sulphur stings those that shirk,
“Let’s deeper dive,” said Dante’s shade, & led me thro’ the murk.
Molbolgia
Eternal Tortures
O Lord, I am submitting myself to you
I am entangled in these worldly bonds
I am attracted by Karma & its consequences
Krishnamacharya
Encountering the last few laps of Hell
We improvis’d steep course thro’ Caina,
Our eyes upon a dreary vision fell,
Pale-faced & shrunk in weary demeanour;
Some demon shade,
Its eye-pits flicking flame,
Clutch’d tight a crooked blade… Herr Hitler was his name.
“He was placed so close to evil,
With the sins of treachery,
Those high sinners of the Devil
Who betray their own country
& in its destruction revel,”
There for eternity,
Hounded by hosts of hungry mosquitoes,
He was condemn’d to dwell on all his woes.
“Now we are done here,” Dante said,
Let us start ascending,
Foul phantoms fed our clammy dread
Til the stairwell’s ending,
On mortal earth, where further climb’d rainbow roads upwending.
Purgatory
Pearly Gates
I wrote on the rocks & on the waves of the sea
Your name, my Beloved,
But the winds erased what I had written
Abu Firas
A golden staircase in our hearts appears,
& so uprose we to those realms of bliss,
A stunning clock of seven spinning spheres,
The perfect paradise that Heaven is;
Where waits one soul,
My eternal Grandma,
Who shunn’d the mortal fall for Jimmy God’s lodestar.
“My son, tho’ ye are far away,
From low troubles upon earth,
I still recall the special day
Heaven calls your day of birth,
& daily for your safety pray
Beside the astral tirth,
To see you up in Heaven makes me proud…”
Her sweet voice falls, her face cover’d by cloud.
I watch’d her fading with a pang
& whisper’d true yikor,
The angels sang, their fanfares rang,
But still I wanted more…
“Go on my child,” her voice was mild, grief lifted from my core.
Ring of Lesser Spheres
Heavenly Passage
I had no beginning & I shall have
no end : the beam of light
stretches out before & behind
Ron Padgett
Light illimitable thrusts in plenitude,
The extravagant rising of a star,
All minds on earth sophisticate & crude
Awaken to the worlds these rays unbar;
Archangel stands
On battle cairn of bones,
Pearl pibroch in his hands straining the noble tones.
Souls join’d him in his lofty song,
Triumphant in harmony,
Exalted voices deep & strong,
Charlemagne & Duke Godfrey
But two cantari in that throng
Of dashing chivalry,
The music of the soldiers of the cross,
Lamentation-tinged for their war-gods loss.
Now the long page of peace begun
& legends live namore,
Thro’ gore & gun our world wars won,
Wisdom sent to the fore,
When modern human automons may only read of war.
Ring of Mars
Epic Vistas
The bud
stands for all things
even for those things that don’t flower
Galway Kinnel
Like Burnley men when misty Pendle clears,
Fresh vistas spread, each vein’s fibres tingl’d,
Symphonious, the planetary spheres,
Mazy in a spangling motion mingl’d;
The Righteous blurr’d,
Merging as solid gold,
Spelling the holy word in splendours manifold.
‘DILIGITE JUSTITIAM.’
Forms upon the firmament,
Then, ‘QUI JUDIATIS TERRAM,’
Spread across the starry tent,
Yet other phrases praise the Lamb,
We watch’d them all silent,
& yet, our souls were singing in concord
To this lovely libretto of the Lord.
“Now,” serves Dante, “Our paths must part,
This time together flown,
Before ye start open thy heart
& turn thy sins to stone,”
Then with a smile he join’d his kin & left me there alone.
Ring of Jupiter
Circle of Fixed Stars
On its helm, seen far away,
A planet, like the Morning’s, lay;
And those plumes its light rain’d through
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I climb’d up to a pearly battlement,
Mocking all human art, menhir fortress,
With stars & planets circumambient,
I saw Christ on his triumphal progress;
Saintly nation,
Forming translucent flame,
Gracious congregation chaunting their saviour’s name.
I tip-toed thro’ those holy halls
Upon a course collision,
Portraits of saints hung from the walls,
“Forgive my imposition…”
Jove’s gloriousness awenthralls,
O! Beatific vision!
That bathes my senses to my unclos’d core,
As now I write can recollect no more!
I woke up with rose-wreathed crown
Gliding by angel wing,
She set me down above the town
Upon a mountain king,
Then soar’d thro’ sky, shrinking to raven, thrush, fly, then… nothing.
Mount Olympus
Mumble Words 