This poem is taken from PN Review 280, Volume 51 Number 2, November - December 2024.

Dante’s Inferno

Lorna Goodison
Canto VI

When I come back to myself after I faint like I dead
after I heard that tragic tale about those two
unfortunates that made me feel so sorry for them,

I sight up new torments and ones that get tormented
wherever I set foot or look, in the third circle where
I find myself; it cold so till, and sheeting hard rain.

A dark and stubborn man-rain that rush down wet
same way from beginning to end, pissing a stream
of dirty ditch water mixed with hail and ice fragments

pelt down without stop through the foul air of hell;
and where it drop it give off a renking frowsy smell:
Sir B. Russ with him three head, a monster well wicked.

The dog-heart bark three time louder at all the duppy
down here; for is three throat him have, him eye red,
him greasy beard black; him big belly is a wanga gut.
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