The Portable Dante (78 page)

The language that I spoke was long extinct before that unaccomplishable task entered the minds of Nimrod’s followers;

no product of the human mind can last eternally for, as all things in Nature, man’s inclination varies with the stars.

That man should speak is only natural, but how he speaks, in this way or in that, Nature allows you to do as you please.

Till I descended to the pains of Hell,
I
was He called on earth That Highest Good Who swathes me in this brilliance of His bliss;

and then He was called
El
: for naturally man’s habits, like the leaves upon the branch, change as they fall and others take their place.

Atop that mountain highest from the sea my time of innocence until disgrace was from my first day’s hour until the hour,

as sun shifts quadrant, following the sixth. ”

“To Father and to Son and Holy Spirit, ” all Heaven with one voice cried, “Glory be!” inebriating me with such sweet sound.

I seemed to see all of the universe turn to a smile; thus, through my eyes and ears I drank into divine inebriation.

O joy! O ecstasy ineffable! O life complete, perfect in love and peace! O wealth unfailing, that can never want!

Before my eyes those four torches kept blazing; and then the first light who had come to me started to grow more brilliant than the rest,

and he took on the glow which Jupiter would take, if he and Mars were like two birds that could exchange their feathers with each other.

That Providence assigning Heaven’s souls each to his turn and function now imposed silence on all the choirs of the blessèd,

and I heard: “Do not marvel at my change of color, for you are about to see all of these souls change color as I speak.

He who on earth usurps that place of mine, that place of mine, that place of mine which now stands vacant in the eyes of Christ, God’s Son,

has turned my sepulchre into a sewer of blood and filth, at which the Evil One who fell from here takes great delight down there. ”

The color which paints clouds at break of day, or in the evening when they face the sun— that same tint I saw spread throughout that Heaven.

And as a modest lady, self-secure in her own virtue, will at the mere mention of someone else’s failings blush with shame,

so did the face of Beatrice change— the heavens saw the same eclipse, I think, when the Almighty suffered for our sins.

Then he continued speaking, but the tone his voice now had was no more different than was the difference in the way he looked:

“The bride of Christ was not nourished on blood that came from me, from Linus and from Cletus, only that she be wooed for love of gold;

it was for love of this delightful life that Sixtus, Pius, Calixtus, and Urban, after the tears of torment, spilled their blood.

Never did we intend for Christendom to be divided, some to take their stand on this side or on that of our successors,

not that the keys which were consigned to me become the emblem for a battleflag warring against the baptized of the land,

nor that my head become the seal to stamp those lying privileges bought and sold. I burn with rage and shame to think of it!

From here we see down there in all your fields rapacious wolves who dress in shepherd’s clothes. O power of God, why do You still hold back?

Sons of Cahors and Gascony prepare to drink our blood: O sanctified beginning, to what foul ending are you doomed to sink!

But that high Providence which saved for Rome the glory of the world through Scipio’s hand, will once again, and soon, lend aid, I know;

and you, my son, whose mortal weight must bring you back to earth again, open your mouth down there and do not hide what I hide not from you!”

As frozen vapors flake and start to snow down through our air during the time of year the horn of heaven’s goat touches the sun,

so I saw all of Heaven’s ether glow with rising snowflakes of triumphant souls of all those who had sojourned with us there.

My eyes followed their shapes up into space and I kept watching them until the height was too much for my eyes to penetrate.

My lady then, who saw that I was freed from gazing upward, said, “Lower your sight, look down and see how far you have revolved. ”

Since the last time that I had looked below I saw that I had moved through the whole arc which the first climate makes from mid to end:

I saw beyond Cadiz to the mad route Ulysses took, and nearly to the shore Europa left as a sweet godly burden.

More of this puny threshing-ground of ours I would have seen, had not the sun moved on beneath my feet a sign and more away.

My mind in love, yearning eternally to court its lady, now was burning more than ever to behold the sight of her.

And all that art and nature can contrive to lure the eye and thus possess the mind, be it in living flesh or portraiture

combined, would seem like nothing when compared to the Divine delight with which I glowed when once more I beheld her smiling face.

The power which her gaze bestowed on me snatched me from Leda’s lovely nest, and up it thrust me into Heaven’s swiftest sphere.

The parts of this, the quickest, highest heaven, are all so equal that I cannot tell where Beatrice chose for me to stay,

but she, who knew my wish, began to speak, such happiness reflecting in her smile, the joy of God, it seemed, was on her face:

“The nature of the universe, which stills its center while it makes all else revolve, moves from this heaven as from its starting-point;

no other ‘Where’ than in the Mind of God contains this heaven, because in that Mind burns the love that turns it and the power it rains.

By circling light and love it is contained as it contains the rest; and only He Who bound them comprehends how they were bound.

It takes its motion from no other sphere, and all the others measure theirs by this, as ten is product of the two and five.

How time can hide its roots in this sphere’s vase and show its leaves stemming through all the rest, should now be clear to your intelligence.

O Greed, so quick to plunge the human race into your depths that no man has the strength to keep his head above your raging waters!

The blossom of man’s will is always good, but then the drenchings of incessant rain turn sound plums into weak and rotten ones.

Only in little children can we find true innocence and faith, and both are gone before their cheeks show the first signs of hair.

While still a lisper, one observes fast-days, but once he’s free to speak, he stuffs his mouth with all he can at any time of year;

one still in lisping childhood loves and heeds his mother’s words, but soon in grown-up language, he’d rather like to see her dead and buried;

thus, the white skin of innocence turns black at first exposure to the tempting daughter of him who brings the morn and leaves the night.

My words should not surprise you when you think there is no one on earth to govern you and so the human family goes astray.

Before all January is unwintered— because of every hundred years’ odd day which men neglect—these lofty spheres shall shine

a light that brings the long-awaited storm to whirl the fleet about from prow to stern, and set it sailing a straight course again.

Then from the blossom shall good fruit come forth. ”

Then once the adverse truth of mankind’s present miserable state was clearly brought to light by her who holds my mind imparadised,

as one who in a mirror catches sight of candlelight aglow behind his back before he sees it or expects to see it,

and, turning from the looking-glass to test the truth of it, he sees that glass and flame are in accord as notes to music’s beat;

just so do I remember doing then, as I stood gazing at the lovely eyes, those lures which Love had used to capture me,

for, when I turned around, my eyes were met by what takes place here in this whirling sphere whenever one looks deep into its motion.

I saw a point that radiated light so piercing that the eyes its brightness strikes are forced to shut from such intensity.

That star which seems the smallest seen from here if set beside that point, like star by star appearing in the heavens, would seem a moon.

Perhaps the distance of a halo’s glow around the brilliant source that colors it when vapors hold it in their density,

as close as that a ring of fire whirled around this point at speed that would surpass the sphere that spins the swiftest round the world;

this one was circled by a second one, second by third, and third by yet a fourth, the fifth the fourth, and then the sixth the fifth;

the seventh followed spreading out so wide that Juno’s messenger, if made complete, could not contain it in her circle-bow.

So came the eighth, the ninth; and each of them revolved more slowly according as it was in number farther from the central one