Tim Pratt: Sympathy for the Devil

And he to me: “Thou still imaginest

Thou art beyond the centre, where I grasped

The hair of the fell worm, who mines the world.

That side thou wast, so long as I descended;

When round I turned me, thou didst pass the point

To which things heavy draw from every side,

And now beneath the hemisphere art come

Opposite that which overhangs the vast

Dry-land, and ’neath whose cope was put to death

The Man who without sin was born and lived.

Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere

Which makes the other face of the Judecca.

Here it is morn when it is evening there;

And he who with his hair a stairway made us

Still fixed remaineth as he was before.

Upon this side he fell down out of heaven;

And all the land, that whilom here emerged,

For fear of him made of the sea a veil,

And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure

To flee from him, what on this side appears

Left the place vacant here, and back recoiled.”

A place there is below, from Beelzebub

As far receding as the tomb extends,

Which not by sight is known, but by the sound

Of a small rivulet, that there descendeth

Through chasm within the stone, which it has gnawed

With course that winds about and slightly falls.

The Guide and I into that hidden road

Now entered, to return to the bright world;

And without care of having any rest

We mounted up, he first and I the second,

Till I beheld through a round aperture

Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;

Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.

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