Lasciate ogne speranza – a sonnet by Dan Campion

Lasciate ogne speranza

I would abandon all hope, but recall
that Dante Alighieri took his tour
in stride and, though he saw things that appall,
showed what a dauntless spirit can endure.
So even in a throng of souls impure,
or deemed so by a scribe who with his pen
enlisted them among the damned, a sure
foot in a stout shoe might emerge again
from Hell’s own rankest river, ring, and den.
So here we are, my friend, in deepest wood,
strange eyes fixed on us since we don’t know when,
and choosing to be elsewhere if we could.
We will not tremble. Nor will we turn back,
nor credit the injunction on the plaque.
 

Dan Campion‘s poems have appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). A selection of his poems was issued by the Ice Cube Press in July 2022: https://icecubepress.com/2021/10/01/a-playbill-for-sunset/