Canto of Doré’s Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri (32)

The benzene completeness is the reality of phantasm

as history fables calendars and agendas:

Auerbach considers ‘the fate of Achilles

is Achillean’ cycle of imprisonment

inevitable in a whirlpool of traitors. Logic

of suicide bombers, eternally trapped in vengeance,

where ‘just cause’ is no way and every way out. In

the tower, a father and his sons are starved to death,

and the fate of the father, Ugolino,

is Ugolinian, as whole villages and towns

and cities are starved out of existence, the last

to perish garnering all hatred, delirious

with wrath and mordacity. It keeps the wheel

turning when muscles are wasted and gone,

conclusive stain of cannibalism

in the dark swirl of ice particles and saturate

unlight, where the sun can’t be located.

Look on! Needs must as each day dies

and we are condemned to this: no dog

was as disloyal, or allowed the chance to be,

leader of the pack given pack mentality,

alpha males will chew your ear off,

head to head, the hungry and the well fed,

perfect solution and perfect plan: perpetual motion,

enclosed system.