Jerome Rothenberg: Previewing 'A Book of Infernos'

Six poems and a coda

[The excerpts that follow are from a new work of mine scheduled for publication later this year by Lunar Chandelier Collective: thirty-four poems and a coda derived loosely from the cantos and circles of Dante’s Inferno, “for the infernos and hungers of the worlds around us.”]

 

INFERNO 1

 

In the middle of the journey
words began to change


my hand tore loose from yours
trying to turn the wheel

 

but growing numb

 

 

INFERNO 2

 

Daylight was going fast

the sky awash with stars

like blood or sand

 

the company around us

growing feckless

unable to find a place to rest

 

 

INFERNO 3

 

God is pain

& leaves us a broken door

to crawl though

 

that the wind snaps shut

trapping the mind inside

unable to find a place to rest

 

 

INFERNO 4

Limbo

 

Thunder overhead breaks hard

 

the more it sounds

the more they run from it

 

poor prisoners inside

a house of plundered dreams

 

 

INFERNO 5

 

A light that drives them blind

they stray abandoned

 

thinking of the chances lost

of bodies raw & flailing

 

in a muddy wind

 

 

INFERNO 6

 

Those who have gorged too much

are hungry still

never too full to calm their craving

 

the more they eat

the more they need to

go on eating

 

 

A BOOK OF INFERNOS

Coda

 

A man with three mouths

once imagined

 

sucks out the life from those

he swallows

 

the privilege of the rich

escaped & safe

 

the sky no longer

beckoning

 

who hide behind

each other

 

driving back

the dark invaders

 

they are the final guides

for this inferno

 

guarding what they build

& plunder

 

under a black sun

that will lead us

 

to another world

a gilded hell

 

the hungry earth

absent a dream

 

unable to call us

home