Dante's circles of hell, that is to say, all nine or ten
Have vanished with the evils of his time.
But Hell itself has much enlarged since then
To guarantee that eternal punishment fits the crime.
In Dante's Hell, the inner circle was the worst
For that was the infernal reward for treachery
Where those who betrayed a trust were forever cursed
To be 9/10s submerged in the ice of a frozen sea.
That torment is current so, in my opening, I misspoke,
Only, it has been much expanded to serve the glut!
(Circle eight is reserved for the Brothers Koch.)
Circle seven is for all those who denied and lied about climate
Albeit, upgraded for those who blasphemed climate science
And for those who wreaked violence on the land.
They will have to pay for their malfeasance
By being buried to their necks in tar sand.
Circle six is for Hawks, who worship war
And those who sell weapons. And since they work together
Their torment is to be conjoined by a special kind of tar
That binds them to a bomb by the shortest tether.
Circle five is for the Banker, the Investor and the Broker
And every breed of Capitalist (and this is kind of funny):
All those Hoarders and those Spenders, they imagine they are poor!
And pine for molten rocks they think are money.
Circle four is for the Oblivious who go about their days
Imagining that everything is fine.
They will spend eternity walking in a daze
And their walk will follow a perfectly straight line.
Circle three is for Poachers of any living thing.
Circle two for those who sanction torture.
They will just resume doing what they love - interrogating
Except they will be torturing each other.
As for circle one, in this day's Hell, the devil's wrath relaxes,
In fact it isn't even there,
Because for those who pay their taxes
The first circle of Hell isn't in Hell, it's here.
(Article changed on Mar 21, 2022 at 7:41 AM EDT)
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