FOSSIL

--------------------

Were there a language dark enough to speak
truly of that hole harrowed by crags
gravity itself could not fall through to,
I could taste the salt of my conception.
But words are abstract, sadly approximate
dull with use. ...

May the voices the stones followed down
the mountain all the way to Thebes find me
as they found Amphion's lyre, here bear witness.
Hopeless beyond reason, 0 disfigured crowds
in the place where words fail me, better you
had grazed mindlessly as goats or sheep .
….

Dante's Inferno: Canto XXXII, lines 1-15
translation: Deborah Digges, Dante's Inferno Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets, edited by Daniel Halpern, The Ecco Press, NY, 1993, pg.145

TERRAIN

FISSURE

CREVASSE

FOSSIL

LACCOLITH

PINNACLE