Sol 5.6

  1. I entered a bathhouse unsuspectingly,

    when my ill fortune and my doom summoned me,

  2. eager as I was for a little repose

    to enjoy after exhaustion and fatigue.

  3. Instead, I found in it all that could distress me:

    anguish of spirit and an eye made hot with grief,

  4. a heat that melted the heart with anguish, as

    abandonment and parting do to lovers.

  5. The people within were packed in a crush, as

    molten silver is poured into a mold,

  6. beneath smoke that came through an opening

    leading from a little nook to its furnace,

  7. and such an excess of lurking stench that I thought it

    was hounding the nose for an old score and a debt.

  8. So I resolved to get out, after

    having entered, supposing what I sought was easy.

  9. But what my imagination had pictured

    in that belief proved delusion and falsehood.

  10. The door had vanished—and suppose it had not—

    how, and where, was there any path to escape?

  11. The ordeal pressed me to an extremity

    that was death itself, or barely short of it.

  12. So may God's curse fall upon any learned man

    or fool who enters it twice.

Sol 5.6