Forese Donati
While fastening my gaze through the green leaves,
I peered up as a hunter usually does
Who wastes his life in prowling after birds.
At that my more-than-father told me, "Son,
5 Come on now, for the time allotted us
Ought to be portioned out more purposefully."
I turned my eyes and — just as fast — my steps
Straight after those two sages who talked so,
That it made walking with them cost me nothing.
10 And suddenly in tears and song we heard
"Open my lips, O Lord," sung in such tones
That it gave birth to gladness and to grief.
"O gentle father, what is this I hear?"
I wondered; and he: "Shades who journey on,
15 Perhaps loosening the knot of their bad debt."
Like pilgrims who go wrapped in pious thought
And, overtaking strangers on the road,
Turn toward them but do not stop to talk,
So from behind us, moving faster, coming
20 And passing by, there gazed at us in wonder
A throng of spirits, silent and devout.
The eyes of each were dark and hollowed-out,
Their faces pale and they so shriveled up
That their skin took its contour from their bones.
25 I doubt Erysichthon was so dried up
Right down to the rind by his huge hunger
When he was most afraid that he must fast.
In thought I said then to myself, "Look on
The people there who lost Jerusalem
30 When Miriam tore her son with her beak!"
The sockets of their eyes seemed gemless rings:
Those who read OMO in the face of man
Would plainly there have recognized the M.
Who would have dreamt that odor of a fruit
35 And that of water, by creating the craving,
Would have done this without his knowing how?
I was still wondering what starves them so,
Since I had not yet fully grasped the reason
For their thinness and their wretched scurf,
40 When look! a shade, from deep inside his head,
Turned his eyes on me and steadily stared,
Then cried aloud, "What grace have I received?"
I never would have known him by his looks,
But in his voice I plainly saw revealed
45 What his face had kept obscured from me.
This spark rekindled in me all I knew
Of the features that were now so changed,
And I recognized the face of Forese.
"Ah do not strive to make out who I am
50 Through the dry scabs discoloring my skin,"
He begged, "nor by my scarcity of flesh,
"But tell me the truth about yourself, and say
Who are those two souls there escorting you:
Do not restrain yourself from speaking to me!"
55 "Your face, which once I wept for at your death,"
I answered him, "now gives me no less cause
For tears when I behold you so disfigured.
"Then tell me, for God’s sake, what strips you bare?
Don’t make me talk while I am struck with wonder,
60 For one speaks poorly, driven to distraction."
And he told me, "From the eternal counsel
The power that emaciates us so
Falls into the water and the tree.
"All these people who in weeping sing
65 Resanctify themselves in thirst and hunger
For having followed appetite too much.
"Craving for food and drink is kindled in us
By the fragrance wafted from the fruit
And from the water splashed on the green leaves;
70 "And not just once while we walk round this road
Is our ordeal renewed — I say ordeal
And yet I ought to say our consolation,
"For that same will that leads us to the tree
Led Christ in gladness to call out ‘Eli,’
75 When he delivered us with his own blood."
And I said to him, "Forese, from that day
When you exchanged the world for a better life,
Not five years have revolved up to this time.
"If your ability to sin more ended
80 Only when the hour of true repentance,
Which reweds us to God, had supervened,
"How is it you have come up here already?
I’d thought to find you still down there below
Where time pays in return for wasted time."
85 And he told me, "What brought me here so soon
To drink the sweet wormwood of these torments
Was my Nella with her flood of tears:
"By her devoted prayers and by her sighs,
She led me from the slope where all must wait
90 And set me free from every other circle.
"All the more precious and beloved by God
Is my dear widow, whom I loved so well,
As she is more alone in her good works.
"For the Barbagia of Sardinia
95 Is far more modest in its womenfolk
Than the Barbagia in which I left her.
"O gentle brother, what would you have me say?
A future time is already clear to me —
Before this hour shall be very old —
100 "When — brazen-faced — those ladies of Florence
Shall from the pulpit be prohibited
To go displaying breasts bare to the paps.
"What barbarian girls, what Saracens
Ever were required to go covered
105 By spiritual or civil ordinance?
"But if those shameless creatures were made sure
Of what swift heaven has in store for them,
They’d open up their mouths by now to howl,
"For if our foresight here does not deceive me,
110 They shall be sad before the hair shall cover
The cheeks of those now soothed by lullabies.
"Ah, brother, hide nothing from me any longer!
You see not only me but all these people
Stare at the spot where you screen out the sun."
115 At this I told him, "If you call to mind
What you have been with me and I with you,
The memory now will still be hard to bear.
"From that life he who goes before me here
Turned me the other day, when you were shown,
120 At the full, the sister there of that one" —
And then I pointed to the sun — "He, through
Deep night, has led me from the truly dead
With this true flesh in which I follow him.
"From there his furtherance has drawn me higher,
125 Mounting up and moving round the mountain
That makes you straight whom the world made crooked.
"He says that he will keep me company
Until I reach the place where Beatrice waits;
There it is destined I be left without him.
130 "Virgil is he who speaks to me this way,"
And I pointed to him, "and this other
Is the shade for whom just now your kingdom,
"Releasing him below, shook all its slopes."
