Friday Poem

Canto 28 of the Inferno

I saw it, I’m sure, and I seem to see it still:
A body with no head that moved along,
moving no differently from all the rest;

he held his severed head up by it hair,
swinging it in one hand just like a lantern,
and as it looked at us it said: ‘Alas!’

Of his own self he made himself a light
and they were two in one and one in two.
How could this be? He who ordained it knows.
.

by Dante Alligieri
from The Inferno
translated by Mark Musa, 1971