Minos's Monologue Poem by fabio vicentini

Divine poet, we meet for the second time.

Much has been changing since you came here last;

First, you would hear, I address you in rhyme.

The reason for this is that the souls thrust

In wait for my sentence have from your book

Memorized some lines they cry in full breast,

Begging to be sent to some precise nook

In hell's furnace they had spent their life

Getting ready to go, and at last look

On that vicious thinker, or famous wife,

To share the remnants of eternity

With the monotony of fruitless strife.

Thus, with quote upon quote, finally I

Became aware, of words and their power,

Of the mind in space and its boundary;

My loyal tail, that will fail god never,

Kept chiming on my body the circle

That would devour the shadows forever,

While I have grown more and more unable

To limit my role to counting its coils.

But I must be bound to the natural

Speech that figures on me the sin's due broil,

And repeat its writing without enquiry-

Thus saved from leaving the guard of this soil

As brainlessly I remain on duty,

Concealed by a continuous deliver

I then compose in private monody.

Alas, that I can't just send each sinner

Into the mouth that heaven shies to see

As I did since Crete I served no longer.

Such a perfect effigy of steady

Fear I was; unflinching after the rough

Growl of my jaws and the fire suddenly

Breaking through the rocks with one single clot

Of burning darkness that hurled down a soul

And prepared the next for my scorching wrath.

Only my lowest part carries the glow

Of the boastful king I was that now is

Threatened by his thoughts to be made a fool

With each new plea of these exhaled corpses,

Which plunges deeper than the ear needle

And hatches words that spur the blood rushes

Not my tail unwinding can unsettle,

But only abstractions on its clumped haste

Find me the past idleness a little.

On every airy mettle of earth sprout

Here abiding, I threaded the former

Thirst to will in rays that couldn't satiate

My contemplative lumen, but harsher

To perdition rekindled the contrast

That me in each perceived a dainty seeker

Of love unfelt grace and each on me cast

The envied eclipse for our restless minds.

For I have known them all already: vast

Masses of stalk ragged skin that to the winds

Bend the volume of their unspent pleasures

While trying to season the sway that finds

The quiet inlet to plant some seeds and gears,

That they might untimely grow to dig

A place for their praise which rests on their graves;

One by one I feed on the broken twig

That tended to me the dross of its rot

That to me seemed a melancholy gig

Where plumes of mornings on heaven chariot

Ushered the dew that the leaves' cuddled air

Magnified to a prism of sephiroth,

Bestowing its rainbow fanned rabbet lair

On joined degrees of a seeping caress

Busts to the landscape in one living choir

That each stranded pollen grain sublimates

For the breath that caused to chase its place;

So are the spirit that I judge: shadows

Only due to the greatest part of grace

That I see they retain when walk me by

And droop the strain that in them strove for peace.

Not with them is mine but for the sneaky

Crawl of my reptilian-like appendix

That the universal right does apply,

And I alone knowledge and its antics

Inscribe on laws' eternal narrowness,

That self with self celebrates and begets,

But the faint clash that moments embraces

With the spirit of a trembling glory,

Born by sparkles striding against sparkles,

Disavows with blinding anxiety,

While the beauty of the incarnated

Fire, that is in all infused energy

Of coalescent veins by touch departed

And in one conscience embedded again,

As the spring from where dried bones are flooded

Into beading winds, on which dawn the gain

Of constancy's deceitful vows is sieved

From the incandescent sense's domain,

Lodges through the faltering of triggered

Tongues the beat from the celestial ore,

In puffed molten slits that mirror the craved

Flesh with the golden goblet at its core.

I have seen sorrowful individuals,

Unable to be thankful, and what for,

Their values being no more than a visual

Degree of not belonging; I have seen

Heads pierced to the ground for ephemeral

Conquests that still would have sustained livin'

Were it not that their substance snapped under

The mould of fantasy only some thin

Villainous hopes brought to a veiled order;

I have seen passions consumed to madness,

Obscured by bleaching light that the lore

Of being the emblem of a name thrashes

To wooing despair; for them the threshold

On this pit less lament marks no changes:

This is where decisions end when their old

Dreams have cleaved doom by being seized upon,

And I that condemn them and count them bold

Through their pace I am condemned to linger on...

But enough of me!

You must be close to end the remission

Of your penance on mount purgatory,

Taking the role that Virgil took for you

In one last pilgrimage before haply

Joining the blessed ones in crowning the hue

That essence through each shape weaves and reforms

(i no longer phantom if this your due

Be just recompense or the enormous

Magnification of those qualms that bid

Me frozen to this seat) . Who is the form

That walks beside you? A poet I wouldn't t bet;

If it's so, you must indulge on your way

Longer than the sullen journey forbids.

I read none of the proud intensity

That weighted your brow with the conviction

That boldness is much needed to convey

A gift greater than man's disposition,

There. He even struggles to paraphrase

If being awake improves the condition

That binds the joy of living to the ease

Of indifferent sleep, for interests

He cannot choose any that doesn't debase

Dreamed reliefs with the fear of contestants

Depriving his famine of quiet musing.

Lust, still there is lust that provides a feasts

To tickle him: a feast penetrating

His imagination through every pore,

Poured to complete encounters teasing

Expectations he avoids to explore

Yet uses as excuses for artistic

Indulgence, covering in metaphor

The failure to withstand visions he cannot prick

By sheer voice but must be forced to open

Matrices whose segments ferment frantic-

Ally the vast layering of hymen

Blankness into the globular eyeing

Of presences gasping for their stolen

Harmony. At last I find admiring

That he does not present the fraudulent

Behaviour that you much spent degrading

In Cocytus unrepented rank, bent,

As he is, to seep in his breeding sloth

That saves him from such serious commitment

Of one tasted profit consuming the worth

Of thousand rejoiced while unpursued.

That reminds me to warn you, before forth

I let you go, that this earthly imbued

Cloaca has faced some substantial

Changes: it so happened that the damned

Of the last two centuries are moral

Grammarians, that for comfort distinguish

Punishment from their whiny approval,

And none had whims to carry its anguish

Through the purgatorial slope. Thus heaven,

Seeing that its coming souls had diminished

To the few that still live without modern

Deferral of undetermined virtue,

Has purgatory and hell enwoven

Into one. From this descent onward, you

Will meet the same sterile rings you described

With the same pitchy landslides that devour

The sense of depth the sight might be wonted

To take escape from, but with the spirits

Being free to leave at their likings. Indeed

They never do: they think of their merits

Too eagerly to guess any design

Besides convincing each peer misfits

To believe they're best suited to campaign

For their common wealth. They scold and argue

To prove that the reared trench on their terrain

Provides the widest insight to subdue

All nested circles to their equal wroth,

Till they all are tied by mutual fatigue

On their panting aim giving off the soot

For thought drained of that creative sparkle

That chased light for breeding the unwrought,

Now quenched in the gloss of care's fatal

Spoils where no further motion revives life.

Be that sufficient on your sidereal

Progress, leave the steamy mouths to the rife

Vanishing of their impulse and stir

Fast to join the stars through hell vining hyphae,

While I resume guarding the road to either

While I envision my mind in neither.