Canto XIX of the Purgatory

I am the soft nymph Calypso.
The shadow of Marco Polo.

 Ne l'ora che non può 'l calor diurno
intepidar più 'l freddo de la luna,
vinto da terra, e talor da Saturno

  - quando i geomanti lor Maggior Fortuna
veggiono in or‹ente, innanzi a l'alba,
surger per via che poco le sta bruna -,

  mi venne in sogno una femmina balba,
ne li occhi guercia, e sovra i piè distorta,
con le man monche, e di colore scialba.

  Io la mirava; e come 'l sol conforta
le fredde membra che la notte aggrava,
così lo sguardo mio le facea scorta

At the hour when the sudden awaking lets your dreams look real, appeared to me in a dream, 
a strange woman; she squints her eyes, she limped, her  hands were lacerated 
and her face was pale. I looked at her and I spoke to her, but she could only stammer. 
But as the sun dissolves ice, to look at her for a too long time, 
my eyes untied her tongue, then rectified her body and gave back
in so little time, as only love can do it, all the beauty to her body. 

Thus, having found back her speach, she started to sing so good that
 I had difficulty to detach my spirit from her: 
"I am the soft nymph Calypso who mislays the mortals in the middle of my couch, 
so great is the pleasure that I give. By my melodious song, 
I diverted Ulysses from his Beauty. And I will divert you from yours, beautiful unknown you are, 
because, who impale in me, seldom does leave me, so much I hold him under my charm." 

Her mouth just had been closed on mine and our two bodies were already impaled, 
when a holy lady appeared briskly, besides me, to confuse her. 
She exclaimed, indignated: 
"Oh Baudelaire! oh Baudelaire! 
Who is this perverse woman who seizes the son that I entrusted to you?" 

And Baudelaire arrived at once staring at my holy Mother. She seized, at this same time, 
the sweetheart and cut open her in the front, lacerating her clothing, and she showed me her belly 
so that I abhor her image: the stink that emanated from her woke me up. 
I turned my eyes towards my Master who was saying to me:
 "I called you at least three times! Stand up! come! Let us find the door by where you must enter." 

I rose and already it was daytime; we walked with the sun in our back. 
While following him, I carried my forefront like whom who bend under the weight of his thoughts 
and do like an half arc of his back, when I heard:
"Come, it is here that one passes." 

Whom who spoke in such a way, had a voice so suave and so pleasant that there is none similar 
among the mortals, besides  the indefinable voice of the castrato.
 
Her wings spread, which appeared like those of a swan, whom who spoke to us like so
made us go up between the two walls of the hard cliff. 
Then, by beating his wings, he ventilated us and he says: 
"Blessed, you who cry like that, because your soul will be satisfied!" 

"What then have you to only look  towards the earth?" 

At the interrogation of my Master, I answered: 
"A new vision obsesses me and worries me and makes me walk like this because I always think about it."
 
And he retorted, knowing very well my apprehensions: 
"You see this old witch, alone and who makes cry around her, and how one free himself from her?
She is not there any more where you look at, these are only lures whom
 the King of Heaven makes turn around your spirit." 

At these words, I recovered my spirit and we left from the fifth circle, and there, 
I saw people crying, laying on the ground, the face downward. I heard them saying: 
"My soul is nothing more than dust."


And I challenged Baudelaire who seemed to be in a hurry: 
"Oh master! lessen your steps so that I summon this spirit whose face seems known to me." 

"Spirit who do not cries like these other spirits, stop your journey and tell me who you are 
and why you turn your back to Heaven, and if you want 
that I obtain something for you, on earth, from where I left alive?" 

And he answered to me:
 "I am from the city that sinks in the lagoons and that I left, for too little time, 
to sail in countries never before explored. I exchanged gold against silk 
and my wife against pretty foreign girls. But I sailed so quickly that 
there only remain dreams about them which harass me unceasingly and prevent me 
from courting God. This is why I turn my back to him and that I revive my past unceasingly. 
My name must tell you something  since I am Marco Polo the Venitian." 

To these words, I knelt in front of him. 

"What reason make you bow down like this towards the ground?" 

And I retorted: 
"Because you are worthy for me and my Intellectual guide 
and that I transport your name with me as if it was a talisman."

"Redress your legs! rise, my son! Do not make this error; 
I am, like you and the others and this guide whom you name your Master, 
only the servant of the same Power.

 If ever you understood this holy word of the Gospel, which says: 
"At the resurrection, men have neither wives nor Masters", 
you can very well see, why I speak like so.

 Go now, I do not want you to stop anymore, because your presence makes difficult 
the tears, by which, I make mature what, by seeing you, I recollect of myself. 

I left over there, in this village which fortunately was not yet total,  beautiful foreign girls 
but no Master and, unless our earth, by its narrow-mindedness, did render 
these beautiful foreign girls too familiar, I recommend them to you, but 
do not be for them a Master, but a lover, and do that they remain always foreign to you."