Dark City Transit Authority

Times Square at night, New York, originally uploaded by carlossg.

Welcome

Bienvenue Je vis dans une ville foncée, pleine des ombres et les trains et la pluie et le brouillard et la musique de jazz et de bohémien et les lignes sans fin de souterrain serpentant le souterrain et les tramways se déchargeant par la course et les voisinages las où les pleurs des sirènes et le bruit éloigné de l'écorcement de chiens et les cris perçants de la terreur brisent la solitude et la folie et la maladie et la perte de sang…

I live in a Dark City, full of shadows and trains and rain and fog and Jazz and Gypsy music and endless subway lines snaking underground and streetcars running through run down and weary neighborhoods where the wail of sirens and the distant sound of dogs barking and the shrieks of terror shatter the loneliness and madness and disease and loss of blood...

Portal

Per me si va ne la città dolente,
per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,
per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore:
fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore.
Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.

THROUGH me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric mov'd:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none,
save things Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.

Dante Alighieri
The Inferno
Canto III
verses 1 - 9