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Inferno Canto 13
Translated by Robert Hollander
1 Nessus had not yet reached the other side
2 when we made our way into a forest
3 not marked by any path.
4 No green leaves, but those of dusky hue --
5 not a straight branch, but knotted and contorted --
6 no fruit of any kind, but poisonous thorns.
7 No rougher, denser thickets make a refuge
8 for the wild beasts that hate tilled lands
9 between the Cècina and Corneto.
10 Here the filthy Harpies nest,
11 who drove the Trojans from the Strophades
12 with doleful prophecies of woe to come.
13 They have broad wings, human necks and faces,
14 taloned feet, and feathers on their bulging bellies.
15 Their wailing fills the eerie trees.
16 And my good master then began to speak:
17 'Before you go in deeper you should know,
18 you are, and will be, in the second ring
19 'until you reach the dreadful sand.
20 Pay close attention: you will see such things
21 as are not easily believed from speech alone.'
22 Lamentations I heard on every side
23 but I saw no one who might be crying out
24 so that, confused, I stopped.
25 I think he thought that I thought
26 all these voices in among the branches
27 came from people hiding there.
28 And so the master said: 'If you break off
29 a twig among these brambles,
30 your present thoughts will be cut short.'
31 Then I stretched out my hand
32 and plucked a twig from a tall thorn-bush,
33 and its stem cried out: 'Why do you break me?'
34 When it ran dark with blood
35 it cried again: 'Why do you tear me?
36 Have you no pity in you?
37 'We once were men and now are turned to thorns.
38 Your hand might well have been more merciful
39 had we been souls of snakes.'
40 As from a green log, burning at one end,
41 that blisters and hisses at the other
42 with the rush of sap and air,
43 so from the broken splinter oozed
44 blood and words together, and I let drop
45 that twig and stood like one afraid.
46 'Could he have believed it otherwise,
47 O wounded soul,' my sage spoke up,
48 'what he has seen only in my verses,
49 'he would not have raised his hand against you.
50 But your plight, being incredible, made me
51 goad him to this deed that weighs on me.
52 'Now tell him who you were, so that, by way
53 of recompense, he may revive your fame
54 up in the world, where he's permitted to return.'
55 And the stem said: 'With your pleasing words
56 you so allure me I cannot keep silent.
57 May it not offend if I am now enticed to speak.
58 'I am the one who held both keys
59 to Frederick's heart, and I could turn them,
60 locking and unlocking, so discreetly
61 'I kept his secrets safe from almost everyone.
62 So faithful was I to that glorious office
63 that first I lost my sleep and then my life.
64 'The slut who never took her whoring eyes
65 from Caesar's household, the common bane
66 and special vice of courts,
67 'inflamed all minds against me.
68 And they, inflamed, did so inflame Augustus
69 that welcome honors turned to dismal woe.
70 'My mind, in scornful temper,
71 hoping by dying to escape from scorn,
72 made me, though just, against myself unjust.
73 'By this tree's new-sprung roots I give my oath:
74 not once did I break faith
75 with my true lord, a man so worthy of honor.
76 'If one of you goes back into the world,
77 let him restore my name. It even now lies helpless
78 beneath the blows that envy dealt it.'
79 The poet waited, then he said to me:
80 'Since he is silent now do not waste time
81 but speak if you would ask him more.'
82 And I replied: 'Please question him
83 about the things you think I need to know.
84 For I cannot, such pity fills my heart.'
85 Thus he began again: 'So that this man may,
86 with ready will, do as your words entreat,
87 may it please you, imprisoned spirit,
88 'to tell us further how the souls are bound
89 inside such gnarled wood. And tell us, if you can,
90 if from such limbs one ever is set free.'
91 Then the tree forced out harsh breath, and soon
92 that wind was turned into a voice:
93 'My answer shall be brief.
94 'When the ferocious soul deserts the body
95 after it has wrenched up its own roots,
96 Minos condemns it to the seventh gulch.
97 'It falls into the forest, in a spot not chosen,
98 but flung by fortune, helter-skelter,
99 it fastens like a seed.
100 'It spreads into a shoot, then a wild thicket.
101 The Harpies, feeding on its leaves,
102 give pain and to that pain a mouth.
103 'We will come to claim our cast-off bodies
104 like the others. But it would not be just if we again
105 put on the flesh we robbed from our own souls.
106 'Here shall we drag it, and in this dismal wood
107 our bodies will be hung, each one
108 upon the thorn-bush of its painful shade.'
109 Our attention was still fixed upon the tree,
110 thinking it had more to tell us,
111 when we were startled by a noise,
112 as a man, when he hears
113 the dogs, and branches snapping,
114 knows the boar and hunters near.
115 Now, from the left, two souls came running,
116 naked and torn, and so intent on flight
117 they broke straight through the tangled thicket.
118 The one in front cried: 'Come, come quickly, death!'
119 And the other, who thought his own pace slow:
120 'Lano, your legs were not so nimble
121 at the tournament near the Toppo.'
122 Then, almost out of breath, he pressed himself
123 into a single tangle with a bush.
124 Behind them now the woods were thi
125 with bitches, black and ravenous and swift
126 as hounds loosed from the leash.
127 On him who had hidden in the tangle
128 they set their teeth, tore him to pieces,
129 and carried off those miserable limbs.
130 And then my leader took me by the hand.
131 He led me to the bush,
132 which wept in vain lament from bleeding wounds.
133 'O Jacopo da Sant' Andrea,' it said,
134 'what use was it to make a screen of me?
135 Why must I suffer for your guilty life?'
136 When the master stopped beside it, he said:
137 'Who were you, that through so many wounds
138 pour out with blood your doleful words?'
139 And he to us: 'O souls who have arrived
140 to see the shameless carnage
141 that has torn from me my leaves,
142 'gather them here at the foot of this wretched bush.
143 I was of the city that traded patrons --
144 Mars for John the Baptist. On that account
145 'Mars with his craft will make her grieve forever.
146 And were it not that at the crossing of the Arno
147 some vestige of him still remains,
148 'those citizens who afterwards rebuilt it
149 upon the ashes Àttila had left behind
150 would have done their work in vain.
151 I made my house into my gallows.'
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