From Lust to Violence: More Poems On the Inferno
William Blake, The Lovers Whirlwind, PD
While I said previously that I won’t be sharing all my poems on The Divine Comedy, I can’t help but share this most recent batch. The poems in this section cover cantos 5-11 and circles 2-6, with a hint of circle 7, in Hell. These poems represent my own musings on my spiritual life as well as how Dante presents these sins and their punishments. I hope you enjoy them.
Canto 5
I am enthralled by the movement of desire.
The tail encircles twice to show my place,
And I must join the murmuration in fire.
Now look upon these sinners, see the face
Of Venus Infernal, of Reason losing the reigns
That guide the soul-chariot’s horses from place to place.
But being in my body, I will regain
A chance to leave the “Lovers” to their lust.
Yet first I must wake so I can be moved again
By the diurnal power of the Just.
Canto 6
Wakened by the hungry growls of a dog,
I see the worm condemned to eat the dust.
Ravenous it growls, its talons flog
The sinners known to us as gluttonous.
He snarls and slobbers over their wicked souls,
Infernal tripart beast, old Cerberus.
If only I could hunger for my goal,
Hungering for justice and the right,
The way these sinners hungered for their bowl,
I would not need this journey in the night.
Canto 7
Wheeling round and passing back and forth,
The order of my loves is out of sync
While apathy and anger find their worth.
Lady Fortune’s wheel will rise and sink,
Taking me to unseen heights and depths,
While I am written out in pen and ink,
My sins exposed in their expansive breadth.
Sullen sighs set the brackish marsh to boil,
And to find a way across I am inept.
Will I find my way beneath the soil?
Canto 8
Disordered passions to disordered will
Give way, and for a moment I take pleasure
In the tearing down of sins that kill.
I approach the iron city of evil measure
Where rebel angels mock my wandering soul.
But I must pass them by to find my treasure,
And Reason cannot get me to my goal.
To pass through Dis, I’ll need angelic aid
And the grace of God before I make so bold
To see the lower levels my sin has made.
Canto 9
My sins will make a statue of me yet,
As I tremble waiting for the wrath of Love.
Encircling serpents gather and beget
In me division from the truth above.
Entombed in fire, divorced from what is real
I turn away from all that I should love.
Only the will of God calls me to heal,
But I must turn my sight from sin and listen
To the voices that only wish me well.
Further I must go from the stars that glisten.
Canto 10
Passing through the city of fire, I fear
That I might also cut myself off from you,
Removing myself from all that you hold dear.
Meanwhile, the damned can tell me partial truth
About the worldly end to which I’ll come.
But I must wait for on with better view,
One whose eyes will finally see me home.
But who is the one, the one for whom I wait,
My patron voyager who calls out welcome?
She’ll only appear when I reach my fate.
Canto 11
Even those who sit in Peter’s chair
Are not safeguarded from the threats of Hell.
So what of me who breathes the lower air?
How can I keep from heresy, please tell
Me, one who travels now the dangerous path.
But before I have an answer, I hear a yell.
The violent have made murder of their wrath.
Against their God, creation, and each other
They rage and rage. In their infernal math
They add only wrongs, and by them are they smothered.
