Homage to My Guru

[No piece of literature has touched me as much as Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. My professors, my associates and even my family know how much respect I have for this work and also the pain I bear for not being able to read in its original language. As homage to my guru of literature, I have composed this piece. My poem has only two cantos, Inferno and Purgatory; I do not consider that I have reached the Paradiso, even at an allegorical stage.  While I do not find myself adequate enough to even try to write like Dante, I did try my best to use his rhyming scheme. Like the 34 cantos in the Inferno, I have written 34 lines in each canto. My Inferno and my Purgatory are my stages of life. Like Dante, I have been living away from home for half of my life and like him, I am away because of political reasons. While he spent his exiled years in writing volumes of literature, I am fortunate that I have come across his masterpieces while living as an exilee.]

Canto I – Inferno

Ah Sir! The heavens missed their daily routine,

The twelfth month of nineteen eighty nine;

My life midway like that of the great Florentine.                      3

To the hours of my youth, the clock cursed, “Peek and pine.”

Unheard-of- hurricanes in the Himalayas came.

The causes, the effects – I fail to define.                                      6

All paths closed in my fate’s game,

To find a new one was to first die –

I killed myself; long forgotten was my name.                                      9

I bounced off without even time to sigh

From one bowge of hell to another.

The great poet had Virgil with him, but not I.                            12

Nor did I get to stand by and ponder.

Speak! Sinners of Dante’s Hell, Tell me

Half of my lifetime, in Hell did I not squander?                         15

My sins, what bad would I do? Meek me,

A mouse trapped when lions fought;

But meek is incontinence, I now can see.                                   18

I loved like Francesca, but lustful, I was not.

For Ulysses’ ambitions, my heart not attuned.

Yet amidst the doomed, I was tossed to rot.                                       21

Many times the great poet swooned

The pain of his mankind choked him blue.

What words would he have to see me marooned?                  24

Darker, deeper and denser the dark Hell grew

When the dead me was dying by bits and all

The bells of Hell knelled to a deafening clue.                             27

Like Virgil was sent by the heaven’s call,

Even in Hell, in me grew the seed of love,

Love so strong that melted even Lucifer’s wall.                         30

Like the lover rushed for his loved one above,

I soared with a smile from the darkness of the Hell,

In Hell he said he gained good, but I gained love.                     33

I wish I gained words like his, I pity my stars.

Canto II – Purgatory

No longer alone as I stepped forward,

Lighter than the great one when he lost a P

I held to my angel who had come earthward.                           3

Step by step I taught him, yet he taught me,

In his baby croon I merged my sad song

Of how I never would roam my homeland free.                        6

The great pilgrim buried his anguish in poems so long,

I swallowed mine in tears that never stopped,

Home, why does another place seem so wrong?                      9

My little guide would not allow my heart be dropped

So in his world I learnt to gradually heal,

In his laughter I smiled, a trick that I learnt to adopt.               12

To need is to sin but I needed to feel

Safe that my smiles be not shrouded again;

Selfish prayers but I daily began to kneel.                                  15

Surrendering myself to heavens ten

I flowed with the shades around me.

A vehicle without a driver, I was then.                                       18

Once my vehicle stopped before a sea,

Beyond the sea the Gold Mountain stood;

The sight awoke in me a nameless glee.                                    21

Rachel, Lea, and all of womanhood

Snatched me from the endless gloom

And showered me with blessings good.                                     24

When marigolds in Central Park began to bloom,

I stepped into the Seven Train, to show that I won

I sat amidst the shades in a big college room.                           27

Brighter the day grew in the summer sun,

In my arms I held the Divine Comedy

Hoping for something new and something fun.                        30

Ay Sir, but in it I saw my own tragedy

If only I had met Dante fifteen years before

My soul would have cried, “What a remedy!”                          33

Yet to meet him now, I thank my stars.

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