Dante Alighieri (–1321)

Reading myself at the cliff’s brink, I looked down
Into the canyon my master had revealed
And saw that it was watered by tears of pain:

All through the circular valley I beheld
A host of people coming, weeping but mute.
They walked at a solemn pace that would be called

Liturgical here above. But as my sight
Moved down their bodies, I sensed a strange distortion
That made the angle of chin and chest not right -

The head was twisted backwards: some cruel torsion
Forced face towards kidneys, and the people strode
Backwards, because deprived of forward vision.

Perhaps some time a palsy has wrung the head
Of a man straight back like these, or a terrible stroke-
But I’ve never seen one do so, and doubt it could.

Reader (God grant you the benefit of this book)
Try to imagine, yourself, how I could have kept
Tears of my own from falling for the sake

Of our human imagine so grotesquely reshaped…