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
Poems and poetics