I have an uneasy relationship with Dante, at the same time admiring and a little
repulsed, though I readily concede that he is, as Sam Gamgee felt about elves, ‘a
bit above my likes and dislikes, so to speak’. I think this piece by poet and
translator Jamie McKendrick (b. 1955) is a miniature tour de force in how it
captures the way in which Dante manages simultaneously to alienate yet compel.

Ye Who Enter In
(after Antonio Machado)

To plumb the depths of hell and meet
ministers, saladins and scholars,
Marilyn Monroe and Cleopatra,
the latter naked as the day they died:
to give audience where you please
and where you don’t to curl your lip
or deftly rabbit-punch a kidney
sure that your arm is power-assisted.
To be steered about by someone who just
happens to be Virgil, and you like his poems.
to write as a chisel writes on rock
so every phrase you write resounds forever:
ABANDON ALL HOPE… You first.
No really I insist please after you.

Jamie McKendrick