Purgatorio
Forese. Reproof of immodest Florentine Women. The while among the verdant leaves mine eyes I riveted,
While I fixed my eyes
among the green leaves,
Like a man who wastes his life chasing after small birds,
my more-than-father said to me: "Son,
come now—the time that has been given to us
should be put to better use."
I turned my face and just as quickly my steps
toward the wise guides, who spoke in such a way
that walking became effortless for me.
And then we heard singing mixed with lamentation:
"Labia mea, Domine"—"Open my lips, O Lord"—
sung in a way that brought both joy and sorrow.
"O my dear father, what is this I hear?"
I began, and he answered: "These are souls
perhaps loosening the knots of their debt."
The way thoughtful pilgrims do
when they overtake strangers on the road—
they turn to look but do not stop—
just so, moving faster than us,
coming from behind and passing onward,
a crowd of spirits gazed at us, silent and devout.
Each had eyes dark and sunken,
faces pale, so wasted away
that skin took its shape from bone alone.
I don't think even Erysichthon
could have been withered to such a husk
by famine, even when he feared it most.
Thinking to myself I said: "Look—
these are the people who lost Jerusalem
when Mary made prey of her own son."
Their eye sockets were like rings without gems.
Whoever reads 'omo' in the human face
could clearly recognize the 'm' in theirs.
Who would believe that the scent of an apple
could consume them so with longing,
or the smell of water—and they don't know why?
I was still wondering what starved them so,
the reason not yet clear to me
for their emaciation and wretched squalor,
when suddenly from the hollow of his skull
a shade turned his eyes on me and stared intently,
then cried out: "What grace is this for me?"
I never would have known him by his looks,
but in his voice I clearly heard
what his appearance had hidden within.
This spark completely rekindled in me
recognition of his transformed face,
and I recalled the features of Forese.
"Please, don't stare at this dry leprosy
that discolors my skin," he pleaded,
"or at whatever flesh I might be lacking.
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THE GLUTTONS—FORESE
“"Please, don't stare at this dry leprosy / that discolors my skin," he pleaded, / "or at whatever flesh I might be lacking.”
But tell me the truth about yourself—who are those
two souls who escort you over there?
Don't delay in speaking to me!"
"Your face, which I wept over when you died,
gives me no less cause for weeping now,"
I answered, "seeing it so changed.
But tell me, for God's sake, what strips you bare like this?
Don't make me speak while I'm still marveling—
he speaks poorly who's full of other longings."
And he to me: "From the eternal council
power flows into the water and the tree
we left behind us, by which I grow so thin.
All these people who sing lamenting here,
for following appetite beyond all measure,
are re-sanctified in hunger and thirst.
The desire to eat and drink kindles in us
from the scent rising from the apple tree
and from the spray that waters the green leaves.
And not just once, as we circle this ledge,
our pain is refreshed—I say pain
but should say solace—
for the same longing leads us to the tree
that led Christ to cry 'Eli' in joy
when with his blood he set us free."
And I to him: "Forese, from that day
when you left this world for a better life
not even five years have passed.
If your power to sin was exhausted
before the hour of good sorrow surprised you—
that sorrow which reweds us to God—
how have you climbed up here already?
I thought I'd find you down below,
where time makes restitution for time."
And he to me: "My Nella has led me
so quickly to drink the sweet wormwood
of these torments, with her flooding tears.
With her devout prayers and her sighs
she has drawn me from the shore where souls wait
and freed me from the other circles.
My little widow, whom I loved so much,
is all the more dear and pleasing to God
as she stands more alone in good works.
For the women of Sardinia's Barbagia
are far more modest
than those of the Barbagia I left her in.
O sweet brother, what would you have me say?
I can already see a future time,
not very far from this present hour,
when from the pulpit it will be forbidden
for Florence's shameless womankind
to walk around displaying breast and nipple.
What barbarians ever, what Saracens,
needed spiritual discipline or other punishment
to make them go about covered?
But if those shameless women were assured
of what swift Heaven prepares for them,
their mouths would already be wide open, howling.
For if my foresight here does not deceive me,
they will be grieving before the cheeks grow bearded
of him who now is hushed to sleep with lullabies.
O brother, hide from me no longer—
see that not only I, but all these people
are staring at the place where you block the sun."
So I said to him: "If you bring back to mind
what you were with me and I with you,
the present memory will still be painful.
He who walks in front of me turned me back
from that life, two days ago, when round
the sister of the one over there showed herself full."
And I pointed to the sun. "Through the deep night
of the truly dead, this one has led me
with this real flesh that follows him.
From there his encouragements have led me upward,
climbing and circling around the mountain
that straightens you, whom the world made crooked.
He says he will keep me company
until I reach where Beatrice will be—
there I must remain without him.
This is Virgil, who tells me this,"
and I pointed to him, "and that other is the shade
for whom just now every slope shook throughout
your realm, as it releases him from itself."