he rose above the flame, great chest, great brow;
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
INFERNO, Canto X, illustration 2 (alternate version)
Title: My eyes were fixed on him already. Erect,
Monday, February 23, 2026
INFERNO, Canto IX, illustration 2 (alternate version)
Title: ...all at once three hellish and inhuman
Furies sprang to view, bloodstained and wild.
Their limbs and gestures hinted they were women.
Sunday, February 22, 2026
INFERNO, Canto XXVIII, illustration 4
Title: I saw it there; I seem to see it still --
a body without a head, that moved along
like all the others in that spew and spill.
It held the severed head by its own hair,
swinging it like a lantern in its hand;
and the head looked at us and wept in its despair.
Saturday, February 21, 2026
INFERNO, Canto XXVIII, illustration 3
Title: And one among them with both arms hacked through
cried out, raising his stumps on the foul air
Friday, February 20, 2026
INFERNO, Canto XXVIII, illustration 2
Title: Another -- he had his throat slit, and his nose
slashed off as far as the eyebrows, and a wound
where one of his ears had been -- standing with those
who stared at me in wonder from the pit,
opened the grinning wound of his red gullet
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
INFERNO, Canto XXVIII, illustration 1
Title: Behind us, warden of our mangled horde,
the devil who butchers us and sends us marching
waits to renew our wounds with his long sword
when we have made the circuit of the pit;
for by the time we stand again before him
all the wounds he gave us last have knit.
Saturday, February 14, 2026
INFERNO, Canto XXVII, illustration 4
Title: And so it left, and we
crossed over to the arch of the next fosse
where from the iron treasury of the Lord
Sunday, February 8, 2026
INFERNO, Canto XXVII, illustration 3
Title: "Later, when I was dead, St. Francis came
to claim my soul, but one of the Black Angels
said: 'Leave him. Do not wrong me. This one's name
went into my book the moment he resolved
INFERNO, Canto XXVII, illustration 2
Title: "Polenta's eagles brood
over her walls, and their pinions cover Cervia.
The city that so valiantly withstood
the French, and raised a mountain of their dead,
feels the Green Claws again. Still in Verrucchio
the Aged Mastiff and his Pup, who shed
Montagna's blood, raven in their old ranges.
The cities of Lamone and Santerno
are led by the white den's Lion, he who changes
his politics with the compass."
INFERNO, Canto XXVII, illustration 1
Title: Now, as it left us
with the sweet Poet's license, another came
along that track and our attention turned
to the new flame: a strange and muffled roar
Friday, January 30, 2026
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