Susan Landers – 2 Translations from Dante’s Infern

Susan Landers

2 Translations from Dante’s Inferno

Astray Inferno, Canto 1 / in the middle of a lost road / forest gloomy / straight craft mislaid / / fuck / / how many wars / / sour wild / / thinking a-news fear / let me speak of loving     more than death / of finding / / nothing about this is funny / the way I come     to enter this place / / I am crowded by sleep and sleepy crowds crowding / / abandoning a way / at least one of them right / / I come to the foot of the hill in the fear valley / SOMEWHERE A VOICE: I don’t care about that cause I’m gettin what I want. / planet shrug / / then     light lights     a new street / sparks a sense vigor / my fears quiet / / I’m not sure how this happens / / little waits in my heart lake / / like she of vigorous worry / skin between her teeth / who exits to turn round / / like this     my soul mine     my fugitive anchor     looks back / / to see what I have passed through / that     that     that others     more so than not / / don’t / SOMEONE: Consider the legacy of paths.  The consequences of action or inaction. / I lapse / / lay a little body down / VOICE: What do you want to do with your life? VOICE: I don’t want to hurt anyone. / then resume / desert sore / one foot firm / low / / nearby then / cat err / leopard with thoughtless light / soon with slaughter / / in front of me / I turn / in front of me again / / then     light lights     a new morning / / the sun star climbs / yes / a good hope / / such a good hope     a cat fire fades / / like that / sight returns to me / / a lion     against me coming     with head tall and rabid hunger / / yes / air trembled / SOMEWHERE A VOICE: I can’t honestly say I’m not afraid to die. / then worst yet / / that of all yearning     a he-wolf     carcass a wreck of it / / friction cry / blood dreg / SOMEONE: How can you fault anyone for turning into a lunatic?  What else can you do when pressed against a wall? / him coming against me / little by little / folding into me / where sun hushes / / ruining I / / I see ahead of me one / yes / one of long slow silence / ME: Pity me.  Whatever you are.  Smell or shadow. VOICE: I am of ditch.  I am of sense. SOMEONE: Optimism plays a vital role in success. VOICE: I sing of justice.  And you?  Do you delight in causes of delight?  You lucky you—elect? ME: Are you who spill of speech a river torrent Dante?  I sift your bulk in search of love.  You are my author.  The voice beauty I make horror. See the beast that turns me.  Save me.  He shivers my vein and my pulse. DANTE: Savage weep shouts will not pass him.  Your way he blocks to kill you.  His nature is wicked.  Wrought of cruel yearning never to end.  Feeding on fear to breed fear.  Until one more powerful sends him down to the flames that fired him up.  That one not of earth.  That one not of silver.  That one of hope.  That one of love.  That one of nation between feeling and felt. Follow me.  I will be your guide through this crazy little eternity.  You will hear screech despair. You will see spirit pain.  Then color.  Those content in the fire because they will leave it.  With hope, I a rebel, will leave you, happy elect. ME: Poet with you I will move from the bad to the worse to the bold and the beautiful. / and so we keep / keeping on / The Simoniacs: Pope on a Rope of Silver and Gold Inferno, Canto 19 O simon maggot!  O misery follower! Within whom the good things of God become good money.  Gold and silver vulture. I met this false ring.  This trumpet in the third bulge.  We climbed a sin curve.  Arch over plunge. How cunning the Craftsman!  Crafting in heaven on earth and in hell.  Virtue or monstrosity.  Each to each his compartment. I saw a deep flood.  Stone bruises bearing puncture.  A large everything and everything was round. (Speak bluntly.) Holes neither more wide nor great than those of crazy local baptizings. (And I should know because I broke one once to save a drowning child from its teeth.) Outside the mouth a key or screw. The feet of the sinner. (Talk about taking to one’s heels.) A plant of vivid burning. Strong wallow.  Skin exhaust. This must rind must grow back odd. Soles blazing like things oily. The blaze of the thing stuck to the sole. Pure limit peel this heel. “Who master who, who, yes, worries more wriggles than the others of his syndicate? Who, I say, who in this state does fire suck?” And he to me: “You who of greater carriage guides, give him taste of his wrong cake.” And I: “Such to me how pretty you are.  You please me my sir sign knowing all that I hush.” We came to the dike turned with time and fatigue and descended. To my guide of the dregs I was anchored until we reached the broken weeping. “O whatever you, yes you, are, there below, sad soul, eating shovelfulls of something, say something.  Yes, a motto.” I was like a friar confessing the treacherous assassin driven thick in the pitch—alive— speaking to forestall his certain death. And she cried: “Is that you already mister pretty face?  O poppy pope? Ay Poppi!  I say by several years the writ lied to me if you stand up there upright.  Have you had more than enough of the pretty lady you tormented with no fear of reprisal?” I was struck dumb as if humiliated by a pigeon in its hole. Then Virgil said: “Tell miss cheeky, ‘Never am I who you believe I am.’” And I responded as taxed. To this the spirit twisted. And a voice from scratch (from the sole) blew hard: “Then who is it who asks for me? I say if to know who I am lowers you to this cooker, know who I am was she who was dressed by the best dresser around.  Know who I am was the daughter of the great kangaroo and greedy to become the greatest kangaroo of them all. As such I filled my pouch above to fill my pouch below. Under my head is another stuck in this our slit.  I too will slip further when he who I believed you were comes to this ditch. But already I’ve stood not on my feet longer than those feet that I believed were yours will blush. Then a most resistant thief will come from the west. A Jason he will be. Pliant for a king and his purse.” Maybe I was crazy to respond, but respond I did with: “Tell me how much more treasure did the big mister require of Peter than ‘follow me’? Nor did Peter and the others take gold from Matthias when he was chosen for the office that leaky soul occupied before him. So stay and keep hold of this, your godly amount of punishment, for your ungodly amount of money. And were it not for my anchor, for my reverence to the keys you would have liked to submerge with you, I would afflict you with words (easy now) more grave (deep breath) than your greed, which buries the good and raises the depraved. You are in harmony with the seven headed whore. You have ten horns. You would sing with idolators but for the fact they love another currency and you all the benjamins O Constantine!  Sick mother and dowry.  How spent we are.” And while I crowed, rage or conscience bit her feet, and so pleased my leader he embraced me.  A delicate prisoner, he ferried me across the obscene crag. Not to let me down until we reached the next bulge for unpacking.

return to SHAMPOO 17