DANTE'S SUBLIME COMEDY: HELL, Chapter 25

Chapter 25: More Thieves

Having said that, The Brute flung up his fists,

            each one with two fingers splayed in wide Vs,

            and screamed, “Up your arse God! Fuck you and yours!”      3

A friendly snake, coiling round throat and head,

            choked cursing short, while one between his thighs

tied hands to genitals. He could not move                               6

a finger without pain so, speechless, fled.

            Pestoia, Pestoia, burn yourself down

            rather than breed brutes from the Fucci seed!                          9

In all Hell’s halls I have met none who so

            shamelessly, arrogantly hated God,

            not even he struck dead on Theban walls.                              12

           

A centaur charging past cried, “Where is he?

            Where is that filthy beast?” Maremma’s swamp

            along the Tuscan coast had not more snakes                         15

than writhed upon his back.  Behind the head

a dragon rode his shoulders, bat-wings spread

            and snorting flame.  “That’s Cacus,” my guide said.           18

“He was that cattle-thief Hercules slew,

so is not good enough to share the job

            of keeping tyrants in the moat of blood.”                          21

I heard voices below cry, “Who are you?”

            and down there saw three Florentines too rude

            to give their names. Not knowing them I laid                   24

finger from nose to chin, suggesting that

            we watch them silently.  I heard one say,

            “Where is Cianfa?” in a worried way.                                27

Maybe you won’t believe what happened next.

            It seemed incredible to me.  A reptile,

            six-legged, sprang and clung to the speaker’s front.          30

Mid limbs clasped belly, top claws clamped his arms,

            jaws like a vice gripped cheeks.  The lowest part

            grasped thighs, squeezed tail between and up behind.       33

Never did ivy bind an oak so tight,

            then both forms started merging like hot wax,

            colours and shapes becoming interfused.                          36

“Agnello, you are neither one nor two!”

            the others cried.  Two faces shared one head.

            Torso and legs grew twice as thick.  Two arms               39

stretched twice as long.  Sickened, I gladly saw

            that jumbled monster stumbling away.

            His friends stayed put in spite of their dismay.                42

If they felt safer near us, silly they!

            As in hot summers, over sunlit roads

            the lizards flash from hedge to hedge, through air            45

a wee red goggle-eyed beast flung itself

like dart at belly, hit one where it stung

            the part through which the unborn child is fed,               48

then fell down, crouched, gaped up at the bitten one

            who, hypnotized, gaped back and even yawned.

            Smoke from his navel, smoke from the beast’s snout      51

came squirting out and mingled in a cloud.

            Lucan’s Pharselia tells how bite of snake

            turned Sabellus into a pool of pus, and how                   54

Namidius swelled spherical and burst. 

            Ovid’s Metamorphosis tells of how

            Daphne, Arachne, Arethusa changed                            57

into tree, spider and fountain.  I am first

to tell how substances were interchanged

between two kinds, so Lucan, Ovid,                              60

listen to me.  Under that smoky veil

the lizard’s tail split while the bitten man

            pressed feet, knees, thighs against each other till           63       

separation vanished.  The forked tail took shapes

legs lost.  Meanwhile arms drew into armpits

            while the beast’s fore-legs grew.  Its hind claws clenched,      66

changing into those parts good men conceal –

            the wretch’s private parts became wee feet.

As one sank down the other rose erect.                                 69

One head went bald, the other head grew hair.

            Colours exchanged, yet through the misty air

they still stared eye to eye from changing heads.                   72 

The upright one grew brows, cheeks sprouted ears,

            nose formed above and chin below his mouth

            in which the cleft tongue rounded, fit for speech.                 75       

The croucher’s face had sharpened to a snout,

ears pulled inside as a snail retracts its horns.

The tongue thinned, forked and flickered.The smoke 
stopped.                                                                                                    78

The soul, now lizard, squirmed and hissed and fled.

            The soul now human spat, and turning said

            to he who stayed, “So now let Bosua                              81

run on all fours a while as I have done.”

 I thus knew how none in this robber’s den

             could call their souls their own for very long.              84       

As the unchanged man limped away I knew

            he was crippled Puccio, followed by

Francesco, the ex-lizard, thug and thief                      87       

who brought the folk of Gaville such grief.