the roots

Meditation on Dante’s Inferno Canto 3

For we have reached the place of which I spoke,
where you will see the miserable people,
those who have lost the good of the intellect.” — Dante, Inferno, Canto 3.16.

the words have been severed from the roots,
like a spell that has been unbounded from its book
and walks the earth without its fingers and its toes.
thus it goes this way and that, through a nose, an eye,
into the stomachs and into the guts

it stays there until the blood welcomes it, as into its bed,
after all, it’s sounds are of the sweetest song or poetry,
or a pretty figure, the girl with a flower in her hair,
and in that way she walks hither and thither, o Siren,
you know that is her name, don’t you?

the words have been severed from their roots,
beyond all recognition, cancer is just a tiny little cell,
a word disguised as another prettier one, tiny little thief,
that steals bits and pieces of your soul while you sleep
while you dream of it, and be happy while dreaming

the word, she walks in like the night, never to sink again
to make room for the sunshine that she swallowed
when you used that mangled word that has no soul,
no root; “dead” as the English like to call it,
or “ded’ as their children waste it.

they throw them words around like hot potatoes
in their head are the hot potatoes and so much waste,
old ded shredded bark, and desiccated leaves, scattered
it doesn’t matter where I put mine, it is only skinned alive
as soon as it hits the page

the words have been severed from their roots
and the ones that haven’t been are a sacrifice
to that Hollywood’s lusty and fiendish Baphomet
who likes to eat the fat, the plump, the rich, the living
words that used to grow and run like horses

the ones the old poets used to tend in their gardens,
the ones who wrote a warning sign upon its gate that read:


Through me the way to the infernal city
Through me the way to eternal sadness:
Through me the way to the lost people.
Justice moved my supreme maker:
I was shaped by divine power,
By highest wisdom, and by primal love.
Before me, nothing was created,
that is not eternal: And eternal I endure.

Forsake all hope, all you that enter here.
(Dante, Inferno, Canto 3, The Gates of Hell).

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