“Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate.” ***

                                     Dante Alighieri/ Divina Comedia

                   (The inscription on the Gate of Hell, Canto III. Inferno.)

On a dull evening, many aeons ago,

The Good Lord said: “I am truly bored and though

I’m ashamed that nothing comes to my mind

That would chase my boredom… I need to unwind.

Maybe I ought to create a Universe,

A big space in which everything is diverse.

Let there be Solar Systems and Milky Way,

Let there be Earth and Life created from clay,

Let there be Animals and Man... and… Boredom…

Something, which will define my earthly Kingdom.

Let there be Men, Women, Poor Men, filthy Rich,

Let there be Freedom and Tyranny… and Glitch…

Let there be Good, let there be truly Bad…”

And it became so… and the Lord went to bed…

And since all that time everything so remained…

The Good Lord stayed bored… and that way he reigned…

The Good Lord blundered…. Many aeons ago…

Out of boredom… and we have nowhere to go…

*** All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

© P.J. Oszmann (1954 – in Hungarian. English transliteration: 2004.)

Illustration: Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Sistine Chapel. Rome.

The original of this poem – in Hungarian – was written at the time when post-Stalinist oppression was still at its heights and life in general and everything still seemed hopeless… and I just finished reading Dante’s Divina Comedia… something like the fifth time…  This poem was intended as another allegorical reference to the “System”… a “swipe” against both religion and politics…

[My personal feeling was at that time that the above quoted inscription on the gate of hell should have been placed instead at the orifice of the Birth Canal, preferably legible from both directions… that feeling hardly changed since... (just kidding)]