Photo by crisfotolux / Adobe Stock

Beneath the hollow skies of frost,
Dante wandered—unshackled,
his sight, a blade;
he carved through shadow with his gaze,
as if the weight of time and sin
could settle at his feet.

He saw the stars above,
unblinded by the vanity of light,
and in that radiance,
he knew the truth of the soul,
neither with pity nor with scorn
but as one who merely understood.

The inferno—an echo
of lives we’d prefer to forget—
became his map of pure impartiality.
The damned did not ask for mercy;
they only offered silence.
And in this silence,
he wove the threads of his thought,
unfurling the tapestry
of all who had lived without name or mask.

In the calm of the paradiso,
where the angels do not bow,
Dante’s gaze did not falter.
There, too, he sought no favor—
only the endless clarity
of the truth beneath our feet,
too simple, too harsh,
to be ignored.

A mind unsentimental,
unwilling to decorate the wound,
he never flinched
as heaven and hell unfolded
before his eyes like paper wings.
Impartial as a mirror,
he saw each face, each soul,
and understood they were not gods
nor beasts—
but something far more elusive:
what we are,
beyond the veil of name.

The wisdom of his silence
lingers in the dust we leave behind,
as though his vision alone
could lift the weight of this earth
and set it adrift in the sky,
unbiased, unseen,
but always real.

Translation from the Italian