down where the sun is mute. I’ve only read broken cantos before, never worked my way through each circle in the descent. It’s a foundation of thinking text, I wish they’d made us read it in school. For it’s no narrow thing. Dante brings in everyone that’s had a spark of life, all of antiquity, all the mortals and supernaturals from the myths: Jason in his tearless shame tramps the same ditch as Florentine cads and conmen, while the Minotaur snarls from the rocks. Suggestion again that the bullman has a soul. And all the pagans – virtuous or not – wait there too, weightless forever in their high circle, Limbo. It’s an everyone Inferno. Feels a long way from my last, beguiling but dazzling read, In the Shadow of the Machine. Yet I know that author was thinking of Dante when he penned his paras. All texts worth reading connect somehow. This year canters away, I barely feel I’ve got going but there’s a book tower that logs my weeks. If nothing else, I’ve been mulling and paying my dues to the careful word. I’d write some of my own if I can. Been looking out for a space where I can stage a second play. If I can find the discipline and buckage to get there I’ll hear the words I’ve written come alive again, in another sunless place. Hear the watchers shuffle and cough, wonder what’s going through their minds. Two flights down.
