The Divine Comedy by Clive James - Hell At the mid-point of the path through life, I found Myself lost in a wood so dark, the way Ahead was blotted out. The keening sound I still make shows how hard it is to say How harsh and bitter that place felt to me— Merely to think of it renews the fear— So bad that death by only a degree Could possibly be worse. As you shall hear, It led to good things too, eventually, But there and then I saw no sign of those, And can’t say even now how I had come To be there, stunned and following my nose Away from the straight path. And then, still numb From pressure on the heart, still in a daze, I stumbled on the threshold of a hill Where trees no longer grew. Lifting my gaze, I saw its shoulders edged with overspill From our sure guide, the sun, whose soothing rays At least a little melted what that night Of dread had done to harden my heart’s lake— And like someone who crawls, half dead with fright, Out of the sea, and breathes, and turns to take A long look at the water, so my soul, Still thinking of escape from the dark wood I had escaped, looked back to see it whole, The force field no one ever has withstood And stayed alive. I rested for a while, And then resumed, along the empty slope, My journey, in the standard crofter’s style, Weight on the lower foot. Harder to cope When things got steeper, and a mountain cat With parti-coloured pelt, light on its feet, In a trice was in my face and stayed like that, Barring my way, encouraging retreat. Translated from the Italian by Clive James
Posted on: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 09:20:42 +0000