INFERNAL SONNET

Certainly, there must have poets in hell;

perhaps many, for different reasons:

some, for being hated by unfriendly muses,

others, victims of diabolic passions.

Wandering restlessly on the boiling hills,

one may find clumsy poets like myself,

searching for the absent rhythms and rimes

in poems written when they were alive.

In Lucifer's court, nevertheless,

they would not be the most accounted for

- oh no, as their voices please the ears of gods!

Instead, the Muse is announcing now

that most of the fallen and damned souls

are lovers of laws and diplomacy...

(Translation of "Soneto Infernal", written in Beirut, Lebanon, on 13.9.1978)