Dante and Virgil approach the Devil himself in the bowels of Hell, as they prepare to escape the Inferno and enter Purgatorio:
“As when a thick mist breathes, or when the rim / Of night creeps up across our hemisphere, / A turning windmill looms in the distance dim.”
___________________
Then there’s me walking east on 94th Street in the early morning of this new year’s eve:
___________________
As when the edge of dawn cuts through the dark
And divides my stooped shadow on the sidewalk left behind
The pitiless light waits, on me to make its mark.
This beginning is my ending, it’s where I hope to find
What I know is missing from these unblinking eyes,
It’s me that I’ve been hiding, between these broken lines.
As when the sun shrugs off the cloak of night
And tests its ambitions against this new horizon,
Only then will I straighten, from there to see the light.
Happy new year, Jim. Steady as she goes...