☀ Today's Poem: Excerpt from "Canto XII" Dante Alighieri

The fantastic creature came toward us dressed
Wholly in white; and in its face, something
Luminous, like Venus in the morning.

The arms opened, then the wings opened;
"Come, the graded walkway is near," it said.
"From there on out, the ascent will be easy.

Only very rarely does one get this invitation.
O human beings, you're born to fly straight up,
Why does a little gust of wind bring you down?"

He took us over to a cleft in the rock face; there,
He tapped my forehead with his wing, then
Promised that from here, it would be steady-on.

The way one climbs the hill on the right,
Over Rubaconte Bridge, where the church that keeps
The well-managed under its thumb is perched,

And the daunting pitch of the slope is broken
By stairways built back in an era
When measures and ledgers were sacrosanct,

So here too, the steep incline coming off
The higher terrace levels out a bit, except
For where the high stone wall infringes on it.

As we were in the midst of making the turn:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit," in a singsong voice,
Nothing at all like how it sounds in a sermon.

Ha! How different the hallways here are
From those in Hell. Here songlike chanting
Ushers one in; down there, shrieks and moans.

Now, mounting the sacred stairway, it seemed
To me that I was already much lighter,
Lighter even than before on the flat plain.

Which led me to ask my teacher, "What type
Of gravity have I been released from, that climbing
The steps now is more or less effortless?"

His answer: "When the remaining Ps
Still on your forehead—although fading—
Will, like the other one, be completely removed,

Your wish to do good will so convince your feet,
They'll not only feel no fatigue, they'll be
Even happier when you hurry them along."

At that point, I did what people caught unaware do
When they suspect, based on how others are acting,
That they may have something on their face—

Which is to use the hand to help settle
The question by feeling around and finding out
What can't in the moment be solved by seeing—

With the fingers of my right hand, it was easy
To find that of the letters carved on my forehead
By the one with the key, there were now only six.

Glancing over at that, my guide smiled.