"La bocca sollevo dal fiero pasto"

Poem from 1994

What light shines through wretched night?

Has some angel not forsaken me?

Found some mercy be spared from heaven,

And be slalom on the worthless tongs of black earth?

What forest dine, that weaves upon me?

What crude desire that loosed me here?

Driven by sound of thunder

Towards a heart of darkness.

To rich delight of flaming paste?

What light simmers on the moon that cannot quench?

What meal could not be consumed by some insatiable wave,

That retrograde Venus into Mars vague?

Do I dare eat a peach?

Can any resistance purge the foreboding

Of the taste of the naked flesh?

Deny us life in bare slumber,

And infernal voices wake us and we drown.

(Again, Dante Inferno XXXIII 1-3 and also T. S. Eliot The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock)