Imminent

I read in the news that the supervolcano 
in the Phlegraean Fields near Naples 
is sputtering dangerously awake. It's not even 
melodrama. A massive eruption would plunge 
the whole world into a global winter that would mean 
game over. In Dante's Inferno, hell is a series of nine 
concentric circles descending into the bowels 
of the earth. Lucifer's trapped in the deepest one: 
an ice pit, no warmth, no sun. The Roman poet Virgil 
is Dante's psychopomp— a kind of usher, a conductor 
of souls into the afterlife. At first I thought they 
entered this realm by boat, through the crater lake 
of a volcano. But when I reviewed the passage, 
at the start of his journey Dante is lost in a dark 
wood. Then he and his guide enter the vestibule of hell, 
before Charon picks them up in his ferry. I can appreciate 
these little touches— how, even as he must have felt his
world (like ours) to be falling apart, vestibule conveys 
a semblance of order, keeps some of the horrors at bay. 
But It's also a reminder: so much evil is running around 
right now, dressed in tuxedos and driving expensive electric 
cars, preaching uncivility as virtue, burning books. 
No one knows what's going to happen. But even if it means
climbing over Satan's frozen rump and genitals with Dante
and Virgil, I want to finish the course, ascend the last
hill and come out of this doomscape, back into the light.