Quando toccarono il culmine, bruciando,
oltre il lamento e il lungo ululà,
le fiamme si piegarono, sfumando.
At life’s end, by well known paths encouraged, I return
blithe to leap the river jetty, climb a precipice of crying gloom.
Charon’s empty skull fingering palmers for what he earns.
I guide a wingèd man who by sooty, ghastly hinges looms,
and spectral legs of smoke will never land, bruised with fiery ash
above the marble saints in collect near rotten, open tombs.
First we trace ten infernal ditches, corrupt with politicians brash,
we levitate toward jutting prominence where sweetest hopes do rest.
My carriage is the Mothman’s wings, that ring impure as ferrous glass.
To the tower all-knowing, which proposes souls the test
an lidless orb, ruby bright, evinces warsome, yet-a-gentle Mars!
We witness souls dervish to cinder sin and whirl-a-joy at best!
Happy I recall my mid-age tale; I had passed Stygian scars
and furrows, the Scylla and Charybdis to forge love’s way to mount
by leaps, I leapt off rising, spheres around the sound of joy, my guard.
At work my wraith wrests penitence from a myriad throng I count,
and his meticulous red eyes bid sinew halt with piercing brights.
Never assume here to know yourself, the hawkmoth differs and is sharp.
The haint grows in the Earth, no care a single virtue told of other nights—
he robs their grace, consigns the careless to sour songs and hells of woe—
Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis, O, bitter, bitter, plight.
Today, sealed six feet underworld, mouths contracted in an O,
stillborn copies—shadows of your life will say, “I am mother, I am wife!”
Like a moth you reply by threes, “Who are you to me? If you say so.”
And as you clutch in hand pilgrim candles to aid your aged sight,
harkening to the fountain of all: the God above God, breath inside breath,
dare the imposters challenge you— “I seek true home, I seek he who is light.”
