Liquor Jack: Purgatory X

Christ in Limbo: Fra Angelico, 1441-1442 (Convento di San Marco, Florence)

As, to support incumbent floor or roof,

For corbel, is a figure sometimes seen,

That crumples up its knees unto its breast;

With the feign’d posture, stirring ruth unfeign’d

In the beholder’s fancy; so I saw
These fashion’d, when I noted well their guise.
Each, as his back was laden, came indeed
Or more or less contracted; and it seem’d
As he, who show’d most patience in his look,
Wailing exclaim’d: “I can endure no more.”

Dante, Purgatorio X, ll. 119-128, trans. Henry F. Cary

It was that kind of day
men found themselves crouched beneath edifices of marble
monuments to their overweening pride
writing on invisible tablets
made of wrinkled skin
as you were saying
these words the wind again
rose, one could feel the flames
touching the other side of the paper

Purgatory X: Sandro Botticelli, 1490s (Staatliche Museen, Berlin)

Chicago Board of Trade II: photo by Andreas Gursky, 1999; image by Hadams6, 18 July 2008 (Matthew Marks Gallery)

Andreas Gursky, Chicago Board of Trade I, 1997