Dante Inferno Canto 20 translated by David Bruce Gain

Part twenty of the first chant will now tell

The torments of the damned sunk deep in hell.
I look down deep below; its floor appears,
Wet with all those anguished sinners` salt tears.
They walk sombre, silent, like foes to mirth
That chant their solemn litanies on earth.
When I looked closer I could see their wrack;
Each neck was twisted; each face viewed its back.
None of them ever saw what was ahead;
All of them had to walk backwards instead.
One palsied may perhaps have once walked so;
`tis not the fate of any whom I know.
As I pray God my chant will be of aid,
Ask how my tears could ever have been stayed
When I saw this twisted, contorted pack;
The tears each shed streamed down to wet his back.
I wept as I leaned on a jagged crest.
My guide: "Are you as witless as the rest?
Here pity lives when it is wholly flown.
Pure pure evil lives in that man alone
Who strives to bend divine will to his own.
You see that man there? Hear of his demise.
The earth split wide before the Thebans` eyes
While they all shouted: 'Where is it he flies?
Amphiaraus, why shun the battle cries?'
He rushed ever downwards till in the clutch
Of Minos, all powerful o`er all such.
You see how he has made his chest his back;
Because he thought far seeing was his knack
He sees behind and walks a backward track.
Behold Tiresias here; his travail
Made him a woman when he`d been a male.
His rod struck two twining snakes to rebloom
His erstwhile body with its manly plume.
His chest is on Aruns` back; his domain
Was worked by those of fair Carrara`s plain.
The hills of Luni, far above them, gave
Him his white marble home, formed from a cave.
And, from this site, with a view bound to please,
He could observe the sea and stars with ease.
And she with her hair flowing back untwined
To cover both the breasts you`ll fail to find
And with her hairy parts in front behind
Was Manto, who had searched through many a vale
Ere come to where I left my mother`s gaol;
Now let me tell you something of her tale.
When her father had heeded death`s cold call
And Bacchus` city became a thrall
She roved the world for many years in all.
Beyond the Tyrol Lake Benaco`s found,
Beneath mountains that are Germania`s bound,
High up and set on fair Italian ground.
The Pennine chain of mountains from Garda
And right up to the Val Camonica,
From a thousand streams or e`en more, partake
Of the waters flowing down into that lake;
Verona's, Brescia`s, Trent`s bishops draw
Their boundaries from an island at its core.
A handsome well~built fortress, Peschiera,
Wards off those from Bergamo and Brescia,
Along the lowest point of that lake`s shore
Where all Benaco`s excess waters pour
Through green lands; at source, its name is Mencio,
To Governol, where it enters the Po.
It finds a level, ere half its course is run,
And there spreads into a huge marshy tun,
Rank and unwholesome in the summer sun.
This trull, passing one day, sees in the mire
What`s untilled, uninhabited, but dryer.
There, with but her thralls` company, she plied
Her arts, and there she lived and there she died.
It then drew scattered folk from far and wide,
Safe, girded by a swamp on every side.
Since you, Manto, burled there, were its cause
The name they gave it, Mantua, is yours.
`twas fuller ere Casalodi, the lord,
The fool, fell for fell Pinamonto`s fraud.
It is thus my Mantua knows and knew
Its source; if others try to deceive you
Let no false tales adulterate the true".
I: "I accept your explanations whole;
All other tales would but be burnt~out coal.
But tell me of any passing grandees
If you see any there whose tale could please,
Since now my mind is set on only these".
And he to me: "The one whose beard flows down
From his twin cheeks and makes his back all brown
Was (when he stripped Greece of all its males
Save those whose sounds were but their baby wails)
An augur, with Calchas; `twas his decree
At Aulis cut the first ship`s cables free.
He is Eurypylus; fired by the Nine,
I sang him in that work of theirs and mine;
You should know where, you know it, every line.
The other one, with flanks like a fiord,
Was Michael Scott, whose mean mean mind was stored
With every trick there was of magic fraud.
See Guido Bonatti; see Asdente,
Who wishes now he`d been a devotee
Of making shoes; he`ll never now be free.
See hags who left needle, spindle, to tell
The future and use dolls to cast a spell.
But come! Cain with his thorn~bush strides the sill
That sits at the sky`s equator, until
He dips into the waves below Seville.
Last night the moon was full; it was she whom
You loved, lost in the wood of endless gloom".
While he still spoke we moved on o`er the flume.