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Pausing in his savage meal, the sinner raised His mouth and wiped it clean along the hair Left on his head whose back he had laid waste. Then he began: "You ask me to endure Reliving a grief so desperate, even the thought Torments my heart even as I prepare To tell it. But if my words are seeds, with fruit Of infamy for this traitor that I gnaw, I will both speak and weep within your sight. I don't know who you are that come here, or how, But you are surely Florentine to my ear. I was Count Ugolino, you must know: This is Archbishop Ruggieri. You will hear Why I am such a neighbor to him as this: How, through my trust and his devices, I bore First being taken, then killed, no need to trace; But things which you cannot have heard about-- The manner of my death, how cruel it was-- I shall describe, and you can tell from that If he has wronged me. A slit in the Tower Mew (Called Hunger's Tower after me, where yet Others will be closed up) had let me view Several moons already, when my bad dream Came to me, piercing the future's veil right through: This man appeared as lord of the hunt; he came Chasing a wolf and whelps, on that high slope That blocks the Pisans' view of Lucca. With him His lean hounds ran, well trained and eager; his troop-- Gualandi, Sismondi, Lanfranchi--had been sent To ride in front of him. With no escape, After a short run, father and sons seemed spent; I saw their flanks, that sharp fangs seemed to tear. I woke before dawn, hearing the complaint Of my own children, who were with me there, Whimpering in there sleep and asking for bread. You grieve already, or truly cruel you are, As you think of what my heart began to dread-- And if not now, then when do you shed a tear? They were awake now, with the hour when food Was usually brought us drawing near, And each on apprehensive from his dream. And then I heard them nailing shut the door Into that fearful tower--a pounding that came From far below. Hearing that noise, I stared Into my children's faces, not speaking to them. Inside me I was turned to stone, so hard I could not weep; the children wept. And my Little Anselmo, peering at me, inquired: 'Father, what ails you?' And still I did not cry, Nor did I answer, all that day and night Until the next sun dawned. When one small ray Found its way into our prison, and I made out In their four faces the image of my own, I bit my hands for grief; when they saw that, They thought I did it from my hunger's pain, And suddenly rose. 'Father: our pain,' they said, 'Will lessen if you eat us--you are the one Who clothed us in this wretched flesh: we plead For you to be the one who strips it away.' I calmed myself to grieve them less. We stayed Silent through that and then the following day. O you hard earth, why didn't you open then? When we had reached the fourth day, Gaddo lay Stretched at my feet where he had fallen down: 'Father, why don't you help me?' he said, and died. And surely as you see me, so one by one I watched the others fall till all were dead, Between the fifth day and the sixth. And I, Already going blind, groped over my brood-- Calling to them, though I had watched them die, For two long days. And then the hunger had more Power than even sorrow had over me." When he had finished, with a sideways stare He gripped the skull again in his teeth, which ground Strong as a dog's against the bone he tore. Ah, Pisa! You shame the peoples of the fair land Where si is spoken: slow as your neighbors are To punish you, may Gorgona shift its ground, And Capraia, till those islands make a bar To dam the Arno, and drown your populace-- Every soul in you! Though Ugolino bore The fame of having betrayed your fortresses, Still it was wrong in you so to torment His helpless children. You Thebes of latter days, Their youthful ages made them innocent!-- Ugucione, Brigata, and the two My song has named already. On we went, To where frost roughly swathes a people who, Instead of downward, turn their faces up. There, weeping keeps them from weeping--for as they do, Grief finds a barrier where the eyes would weep But forced back inward, adds to their agonies: A crystal visor of prior tears fills the cup Below the eyebrow with a knot of ice. And though, as when a callus had grown numb, The cold had sucked all feeling from my face I sensed a wind, and wondered from where it came: "Master, who moves this? Is it not the case All vapors are extinguished in this realm?" "Soon," he responded, "you will reach a place Where your own eyes--beholding what source this blast Is poured by from above--will answer this." And then one wretch encased in the frozen crust Cried out to us, "O souls so cruel that here, Of all the stations, you're assigned the last-- Lift the hard veils away from my face, I implore, So that before the weeping freezes again I can release a little of this despair And misery that swell my heart." Whereon I said, "If you would have he help you, disclose To me who you are: if I don't help you then, May I be sent to the bottom of the ice." He answered, "I am Fra Albergio, the man Of fruit from the evil garden; in this place I get my payment, date for fig." "Oh then," I said to him, "you are already dead?" "I do not know what state my body is in, Nor how it fares in the world above," he said. "For Ptolomea's privilege is this: Down to this place a soul is often conveyed Before it is sent forth by Atropos. So that you may more willingly scrape the cowl Of tears made hard as glass that coats my face, Know that as soon as a soul commits betrayal The way I did, a devil displaces it And governs inside the body until its toll Of years elapses. Meanwhile, down to this vat The soul falls headlong--so it could be true That this shade, wintering here behind me, yet Appears above on earth too: you must know, If you were sent down only a short time past. He is Ser Branca d'Oria; it's years ago He first arrived here to be thus encased." "Now you deceive me, for I am one who knows That Branca d'Oria is not deceased: He eats and drinks and sleeps and puts on clothes," I told him. And he answered, "In the ditch Ruled by the Malebranche above, that seethes And bubbles with the lake of clinging pitch, The shade of Michel Zanche had not yet arrived When this, his killer, had a devil encroach His body (as did his kinsman, when they contrived Together to perform their treachery) And take his place in it. Now as I craved, Reach out your hand and open my eyes for me." I did not open them--for to be rude to such a one as him was courtesy. Ah Genoese!--to every accustomed good, Strangers; with every corruption, amply crowned: Why hasn't the world expunged you as it should? For with Romagna's worst spirit I have found One of you--already, for deeds he was guilty of, Bathed in Cocytus: in soul now underground Who in body still appears alive, above. |
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