Canto XIV

This one starts with a quotation, "Io venni in luogo d'ogni luce muto", ("I came to a place devoid of all light"), which I didn't recognise, but guessed, correctly as it turned out, to be from Dante. For we are in hell, a dantesque, boschesque hell, where Ez has rounded up several classes of people he hates. I suppose I should have been expecting Dante in a work called cantos.

First we encounter politicians, "Addressing crowds through their arse-holes", and financiers. Then we move on to the press:

And those who had lied for hire;
the perverts, the perverters of language,
the perverts, who have set money-lust
Before the pleasures of the senses;

Some specified individuals are mentioned:

The petrified turd that was Verres,
bigots, Calvin and St Clement of Alexandria!
black-beetles, burrowing into the sh-t,
The soil a decrepitude, the ooze full of morsels,
lost contours, erosions.

I don't know who Verres is, and don't feel I need to. (I do find it funny that Ez can't spell out shit).

And then the attack moves on to "vice-crusaders, fahrting through silk" and in a crescendo of invective:

The slough of unamiable liars,
bog of stupidities,
malevolent stupidities, and stupidities,
the soil living pus, full of vermin,
dead maggots begetting live maggots,
slum owners,
usurers squeezing crab-lice, pandars to authority,

It's vigorous and slightly disturbing, as it should be.