Purgatorio (30 page)

               
And then it said: ‘Mary gave more thought   
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that the marriage-feast be decorous and complete

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than for the mouth with which she pleads for you.

               
‘The Roman matrons of antiquity   
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were glad to have but water as their drink,

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and Daniel scorned banquets and acquired wisdom.

               
‘The first age was as beautiful as gold.   
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Its acorns were made savory by hunger

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and thirst made nectar flow in every brook.

               
‘Honey and locusts were the food

               
that nourished John the Baptist in the desert,

               
for which he is glorious and as great

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as in the Gospel is revealed to you.’

               
While I was peering through green boughs,

               
even as do men who waste their lives

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in hunting after birds,   
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my more than father said to me: ‘My son,   
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come along, for the time we are allowed   
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should be apportioned to a better use.’

               
I turned my face, and my steps as quickly,

               
to follow the two sages, whose discourse   
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made my going on seem easy,

               
when with weeping we heard voices sing   
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‘
Labïa mëa, Domine
’ in tones

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that brought at once delight and grief.

               
‘O sweet father, what is that I hear?’ I asked,   
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and he: ‘Shades, perhaps, who go their way

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loosening the knot of what they owe.’

               
Just as pilgrims, absorbed in thought,

               
overtaking strangers on the road,

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turn toward them without coming to a halt,

               
so, coming up behind us at a quicker pace than ours

               
and passing on, a group of souls,

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silent and devout, gazed at us with wonder.

               
Their eyes were dark and sunken,   
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their faces pale, their flesh so wasted

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that the skin took all its shape from bones.

               
I do not believe that Erysichthon had become   
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so consumed, to the very skin, by hunger

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when he was most in terror of it.

               
I said to myself in thought:

               
‘Behold the people who lost Jerusalem

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when Mary set her beak into her son!’

               
The sockets of their eyes resembled rings

               
without their gems. He who reads ‘omo’   
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in men’s faces would easily make out the ‘m.’

               
Who, if he did not know the reason, would believe   
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the scent of fruit and smell of water

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could cause such craving, reducing shades to this?

               
I was wondering what makes them so famished,

               
since what had made them gaunt, with wretched,

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scaling skin, was still unknown to me,   
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when out of the deep-set sockets in his head

               
a shade fixed me with his eyes and cried aloud:

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‘What grace is granted to me now!’   
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I never would have known him by his features,

               
but the sound of his voice made plain to me

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what from his looks had been erased.

               
That spark relit the memory

               
of his changed features

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and I knew Forese’s face.

               
‘Ah,’ he begged, ‘pay no attention

               
to the withered scab discoloring my skin

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nor to this lack of flesh on me,

               
‘but give me news about yourself

               
and tell me of those two souls over there,

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escorting you. Do not hold back your answer.’

               
‘Your face, over which I wept when you were dead,

               
now gives me no less cause for tears,

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seeing it so disfigured,’ I responded.

               
‘In God’s name, tell me what so withers you away.

               
Don’t make me speak while I am so astounded,

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for a man intent on other things speaks ill.’

               
And he to me: ‘From the eternal counsel   
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a power falls onto the tree and on the water

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there behind us. By it am I made so thin.

               
‘All these people who weep while they are singing

               
followed their appetites beyond all measure,

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and here regain, in thirst and hunger, holiness.

               
‘The fragrance coming from the fruit

               
and from the water sprinkled on green boughs

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kindles our craving to eat and drink,

               
‘and not once only, circling in this space,

               
is our pain renewed.

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I speak of pain but should say solace,   
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‘for the same desire leads us to the trees

               
that led Christ to utter
Elì
with such bliss

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when with the blood from His own veins He made us free.’

               
And I to him: ‘Forese, from that day   
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when you exchanged the world for better life,

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five years have not wheeled by until this moment.

               
‘If your power to keep on sinning ended

               
just before the hour of blessèd sorrow

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that marries us once more to God,

               
‘how did you come so far so fast?

               
I thought that I might find you down below,

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where time must be repaid with equal time.’

               
And he answered me: ‘It is my Nella   
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whose flooding tears so quickly brought me

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to drink sweet wormwood in the torments.

               
‘With her devoted prayers and with her sighs,

               
she plucked me from the slope where one must wait

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and freed me from the other circles.

               
‘So much more precious and beloved of God

               
is my dear widow, whom I greatly loved,

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the more she is alone in her good works.

               
‘For the Barbagia of Sardegna   
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shelters many more modest women

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than does that Barbagia where I left her.

               
‘O sweet brother, what would you have me say?

               
In my vision even now I see a time,   
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before this hour shall be very old,

               
‘when from the pulpit it shall be forbidden

               
for the brazen ladies of Florence

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to flaunt their nipples with their breasts.

               
‘What barbarous women, what Saracens,

               
have ever needed spiritual instruction

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or other rules, to walk about in proper dress?

               
‘But if these shameless creatures knew

               
what the swift heavens are preparing, even now

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their mouths would be spread open in a howl.