Canto VI of the Purgatory

The decline of the Empire who pretend to be American.
Send us Jesus-of-Montréal, your son crucified on the mont Royal.

Quando si parte il gioco de la zara,
colui che perde si riman dolente,
repetendo le volte, e tristo impara;
 
  con l'altro se ne va tutta la gente;
qual va dinanzi, e qual di dietro il prende,
e qual dallato li si reca a mente;

  el non s'arresta, e questo e quello intende;
a cui porge la man, più non fa pressa;
e così da la calca si difende.

  Tal era io in quella turba spessa,
volgendo a loro, e qua e là, la faccia,
e promettendo mi sciogliea da essa.

When the game of hazard finishes and that you lose, and that those who are there surround the winner
and harass him, and stick to his arm, that they precede him, or follow him with small steps. 
He do not stop and he enflammed himself for one and the other, without sticking to one more than with an 
other.
Oh loneliness suddendo you not feel !

There,  I see  friends,  disapeared prematurely from violent death and mistresses 
whom I had abandonned after Love, and further,  hands  joined, a mother, mine undoubtedly.
 I saw, her soul separated from her body, the beautiful girl of Samarcante, to have allured me 
 in the sin of adultery; I speak about them and the others also, repenting as long as they still live on earth, 
the beautiful foreign women along the Silk road so that for their sins, they are no more of the worst herd. 

When I had moved away from all these shadows, who requested me so that I intercede
for others to pray, to hasten their sanctification, I communicated my perplexity to Baudelaire: 
"It seems that you deny, in your writings, that the prayer relents the decrees of heaven; 
me, who sin, and who confessed  it, and who falls down again in the sin, 
you would deny that my prayer obtains the forgiveness of God, as these people who pray 
to relent the decrees of Heaven, would their hope be misleaded?" 

"What I wrote, my son, I do not disavow it and the hope  they have in the prayer does not mislead them. 
Whereas certain unconscious have never sinned, do not clear yourself to have sinned, because, to sin, 
is already having a conscience." 
It is how he answered me, but I was not very satisfied with his answer: 
"And if Heaven was reserved to me, would I be at ease to share it with these souls, those 
I did not find in Hell, these rots who populates the earth and who benefitted from life to accumulate 
a capital of sin on the back of the weakest and who request forgiveness at the time of their death?" 

And he answered to me: 
"That exceeds your comprehension of living being, and I fully understand you 
to doubt the unsoundable reasons of God, but Jeanne will make it  understood to you,
 how and why the prayer inflects God and forgives the sins of men." 

And I say to myself: 
"You are too just Yahve, for me to enter in dispute with you.
 However I will speak with you about points of law. Why is it, that the way of the malicious,
is prosperous? Why all the traitors are in peace?"(1) 

Then to Baudelaire who was impatient: 
"Lord lets we hasten more, already I do not have any more tiredness 
and I do not live any more but to rejoin my beloved."
 "We will go ahead with this day, as far as we will still be able to do it, but the road
is not what you imagine it. Before being up there, the night will come to erase your shadow. 
But see there, an isolated soul, solitary, who looks towards us; she will show us the shortest way." 

After having said that, Baudelaire and me came to her: 
Oh foreign soul, how much her attitude was proud and scornful and the movement of her eyes 
full with dignity and slowness! She did not say anything; but she let ourselves approach her,
 by only looking at us, such as the lion at rest does. 
 Baudelaire then, approached her, requesting to show us the best way to go up higher, 
 but without answering the question, she enquires about our state and of which fatherland we were. 

And my soft guide says to her as follows: 
"He is from the City which bears the name of Marie."

 And here is, that the shadow, very recollected in herself, drawn herself up towards me, 
from the place where she initially  was, saying: 
"Oh fellow-citizen, I am a troubadour and of your city!" 
And we embraced ourselves one and the other. 
"Ah Nouvelle-France! Slaverist, inn of pain, ship with too imposing pilot 
which creates the storm, you are no more the queen of the provinces, you are only a ship adrift!" 

This noble soul, at the sole cherished name of her city, 
was all hastened to make a festival here to his fellow-citizen: 

"And today all your inhabitants are in prey with anarchy, and they ignore themselves and they hate
 one and other; those who live on the other side of the wall or rivers which border you. 
Seek, unhappy, around the shores of your rivers, 
and then look in your bosom, if some place, at home, is joyfully in peace.
To what used is it for the Prince to reign on his city if it is Cesar who, from elsewhere, directs the ship; 
look how this animal became rebellious and is likely to sail of its own wings, 
because the spurs do not direct it any more and that somebody from elsewhere put his hand at the briddle. 

And you who reigns elsewhere, who want to reign on everything, who believe you are Cesar and
who has testicles of duck; those who came before you, who made the old laws and who gargled 
of a too quiet revolution, did gave, to the art of managing life, nothing but a thin example 
compared to you who makes so subtle ordinances, that, what you delt yesterday 
arrives all wrong on the morning. And then you start again, without end, to want to police the world. 

How many times, since the time which you remember, have you not changed: laws, currencies, 
magistratures and customs, names of the streets and names of your enemies and renewed
 your membership and your ministries and your methods to bribe the people and to impoverish him! 
If you have good memory and if you see clearly, you will see that you resembles to this patient who cannot 
find rest on his couch, but who, while turning over, tries to fight against the pain. 

Oh Robin  Wood!
You who give up whom who became untamed and wild and who remains there, insensitive
 with the decline of the Empire which pretend to be American, whereas you should bestride  its saddle-
bow, 
that a right judgement falls from heaven on your blood, let it be unheard, let it be clear, 
and such that those who govern from the Capital are afraid of it! 
Come and see your city of Marie who cries, abandoned and solitary, and, day and night, calls you as 
follows: 
"Oh my Drapeau! Why do you abandon me?"

 Come and see your subjects, as they love you 
and if you do not have any pity for us, at least come and redden of its reputation! 
And, if that is allowed to me, I will say: 
"Oh sovereign God! Are your eyes of justice, so turned elsewhere? 
Send to us Jesus-of-Montreal, your son crucified on the mont Royal.
 Or, do you prepare, in the abyss of your wisdom, some other benefit which we cannot foreseen nothing? 
We send you so that he intercedes for us, Maurice "Rocket" Richard, 
since we forgot how we become, ourselves,  heroes."