Muscle Poems

And I to him: “ If it is possible,

I’d like my eyes to have experience

Of the enormous One, Briareus.”

At which he answered: “You shall see Anteus nearby.

He is unfettered and can speak;

He’ll take us to the bottom of evil.

The one you wish to see lies far beyond

And is bound up and just as huge as this one,

And even more ferocious in his gaze.”

                        —- Inferno, from The Divine Comedy

By Dante Alighieri, trans by Allen Mandelbaum (97-105)