Indulgence

Hey! Here I am not going to try to interprest what you meant but present you with my own interpretation! Alighieri's malebolge was a reference to Dante's evil pits, am I right?

The entire poem was a mythical blur to me. By that I mean that I could picture but couldn't relate till I reached,
"Each soul from a rainbow turns grey,
they were ditched in Alighieri's malebolge
---they are now exiles, with wraiths italicized in distaste."

Forgive me for my love for Renaissance ideals. After reading that, your poem seemed to be speaking of how the present overtakes the past and throws its horrors somewhere nobody can ever reach but yet, they seem to prevail only to be thrown back again. This came to me from the idea of Dante's eighth circle. When I looked at it closely, I saw the malebolge as not only a circle of hell, but the cycle of prevalence. How the entire existence of time is merely to serve the purpose, that is the fight, or rather the waging war between what must end and what has the strength to delay its end by stepping on the other and becoming the greater evil. Just as you put it. "Former predators, excommunicated as preys."

And once the cycle ends, a new one begins - leaving the past forgotten and damned forever.

Your poem gave me the vision to percieve the beauty in interpretation. I continue to adore your poems. I agree that I was struck by just one theme, but I think the impact that had on me has fulfilled the purpose of a poem, which is to invoke thought and change.

Keep writing!

Yours sincerely,
Grav

I've read quite a bit of poetry and all but once, it's nearly impossible to feel the poem on a very personal level. Here, I can do just that. It reminds me a lot of a book I read called "Wintergirls" for some reason.

I thoroughly enjoyed it thoroughly not only because it tells a story, but because also because it tells a story and a very melancholy one at that.

Very mysteriously enigmatic poem. Very hard to nail down either its message or meaning .
The litter of souls, denizens of the cave, are actually in Dantes Inferno. This is indicated by the use of the word Malebolg which refers to the ditches of punishment for different crimes.
That I understood.

These souls are punished by being demoted from predator to prey and by being surrounded by grotesque things which they were unaccustomed to before arriving there. They are not physically described in deatal. Instead we are told:

what they eat =mice
Where they live = cave
What they thread, - mountains
What they powder themselves with = poppies
Whom they once were = predators
What color they were = Rainbow
what color they turn = grey

So visualizing them physically isn’t possible.

For many readers the understanding requires looking u the meaning of hedone and of malebog. One is the goddess of pleasure and the other refers to the ditches found in Dantes inferno.


Suggestions:

I do admire the skillful use of alliteration and the assonance. But I sometimes wondered whether sense has been sacrificed for the sake of sound instead of sound being used in reinforcing the sense.

Change of

thread to tread
flavorings to favorings

Since Hedone is a Greek goddess of pleasure, better to refer to her as a “her” and not an “it”.