Dante Inferno Canto 28 translated by David Bruce Gain

Who could, e'en in the simplest kind of prose,

Describe in full the scene of blood and blows
That I saw now - no matter how he chose!
'tis sure that no tongue at all could prevail;
When pain is such man's mind and words must fail.
If one could bring together all who wilt,
Who once upon Puglia's fateful silt
Grieved for their life's blood that the Romans spilt
And spilt again in the long years of war
Which gave great spoils of goden rings and more
(As Livy tells in his most truthful store)
And pile them with the ones who felt the blows
Of Robert Guiscard, whom they dared oppose,
And others still in heaps at Cepriano,
Puglian traitors - add too Tagliacozzo,
Which saw th' unarmed victor old Alardo,
If pierced or maimed limbs of every wan wight
Were combined, there'd be nothing in the fight
To rival the ninth foul bag's bloody sight.
I've never in my life seen any pail
As split as this man, split from top to tail.
Between his legs the dangling entrails hung,
With the fouil sack that turns food into dung.
He looked at me, both hands opening his chest
(While I stared at his misery) and confessed:
"'tis from my tearing my misery is born;
See how Mahomed is deformed and torn!
Ali walks before, weeping without rest,
His face cleft from his chin up to his crest.
Scandal and schism sowers fill this pit;
Since they split others, they themselves are split.
Whenever we pass him over there we're scored
Savagely by a cruel devil's sharp sword,
Seeing the wounds which each one bore before
Are all healed, he opens them up once more.
But who are you upon the bridge, bemused,
In hopes t' escape your fate, though self accused?"
"Not dead as yet nor brought here as a prey
To cleanse his guilt", I heard my master say,
"But here to gain experience of the way.
I, dead, will see he's brought ('tis truth I tell)
Gyre by gyre to the direst depths of hell".
At this more than a hundred stopped to gaze,
Forgetting their agony in their amaze.
"Tell Fra Dolcino, when you're back and free,
Unless he wants to be here soon with me
To stockpile food unless he wants the freeze
To let the Navarrese best him with ease".
When Mahomed had had these words to say,
Stretching his foot out, he moved away.
Another, one-eared, with no nose to note,
And sporting a hole pierced through his throat,
Who had stopped (his wonder forced him to stare)
Now stepped out from all the others to bare
His throat, which ran with crimson everywhere,
And spoke to me: "You whom guilt does not brand,
Unless your face has been too quickly scanned,
I know I've seen you in the Latin land.
Think of Pier da Medicina again
Should you return to see the gentle plain
Sloping from Vercelli to Marcarbo
And inform the two best men of Fano,
The noble Guido and Angiolello.
That, if our foresight here be not all vain,
They'll be hurled in a sack into the main
Near Cattolica, through a lord's disdain;
Twixt Cyprus and Majorca none durst wreak
Such havoc e'er. whether pirate or Greek.
That one-eyed traitor ruling the demesne
That someone here wishes he'd never seen -
They'll find that no prayer will ever avail
T' escape destruction by Focara's gale;
Parleying with him, no need to waste their breath
On such; they'll already have met their death".
I: "If fain I tell those who see the light,
Show the man sated with the bitter sight".
Straight he seized the jaws of a nearby brute
And, squeezing his mouth half open to suit,
He announced: "Here he is, and he is mute.
In exile he told Caesar that doubts cost
And said, to help him when the die was tossed,
'Though prepared, he who hesitates is lost'".
As helpless and bewildered as a stoat,
His tongue hacked off as far down as the throat,
This Curio, once so bold and quick to gloat!
And one who had both arms but had no hand
Raised the gory stumps in the filthy land,
Dripping blood his face could not withstand.
He cried: "You remember Mosca, who swore:
'What happened in the past is now all o'er',
So sowing for Tuscans the seeds of war".
"And death to all your clan", I quickly said,
And he, his fresh dread added to his dread,
Turned like one maddened by his pain and fled.
But I remained to watch the throng and there
I saw what I'd hesitate to declare
Without more proof - indeed I would not dare,
Did not a quite blameless conscience avail,
That trusty companion that can engrail
One's self worth on one like a coat of mail.
I saw, for sure, a headless trunk and seem
To see it still ('tis my own endless theme)
Just like the others of that dismal team.
He held his severed head up by its hair,
One hand swinging it like a lght in air
And it looked upon us in dire despair.
From his own self he made a light, one who
Then was both two in one and one in two;
How so? Only he who so set it knew.
And when he had arrived below our pier
He raised the arm that held the head up clear
So that it could thus speak to us from near.
"Now see my grievous punishment" it said;
"Nowhere could there ever be aught more dread,
You who, still living, come to see the dead.
I tell you this, that up there you may sing
Of me; I am Bertran de Born, the thing,
Th' evil counsellor of the yourhful king.
Who made father and son enemies? I.
Achitophel did no more with his lie;
He made Absalom and David comply.
Because I sundered those that should be one,
I;m doomed to bear my brain (now this is done)
Cleft from the trunk whence all its life should run.
This is my punishment, second to none.