Hoarders

Hoarding

Dante and Virgil arrive at circle 3.5 of hell, where the gluttonous are sent. The specific gluttons sent here are hoarders, people who in their lives have hoarded all their belongings and had houses stacked to the ceilings with useless waste. Hoarding is a form of gluttony, in that it is a habitual greed. Because they refused to clean and detach themselves from their trash, they are now forced to clean the offices of hell, as Beelzebub, the demon of gluttony, continuously stacks the rooms with more papers and used or broken office supplies. The flow of trash never ends, meaning the gluttons are sentenced to endlessly clean for all eternity, not stopping if their hands bleed or form blisters. The floors are lined with glue, making it a sticky environment, in which it is very unpleasant to walk. Unlike their houses, which were complete filth, they must keep these offices spotless so Beelzebub can project more litter at them when they’re finished.

*the rhyme is throughout the whole poem

As I set foot into this strange new realm,
I was puzzled. It felt as if I had left hell,
for other than the heat, it appeared as a normal room.

Everything seemed fine and well,
until I saw the hoarders meeting their doom.
How ironic was the fate in which they fell.

Holding nothing but a broom and plastic bags unfurled,
having gluttonously hoarding every item they acquired
in their life, they must sweep the offices of the underworld.

Since any ticket, tissue, or toy for which they were fiends
they passionately refused to detach from,
their homes remained cluttered and never were cleaned.

Beelzebub now commands them to sweep and dust all his scum.
Mercilessly, he’d continue to let it pile.
A man would have to clean as blood flowed from his blistered thumb.

Papers lined with sticky glue, I stepped through the bile
came face to face with a worker himself. He said
to me, “It keeps coming, it never ends,” with a creepy, forced smile.

For over a brand new wreck I had to tread.
When he cleaned up his mess, it automatically appeared.
Above Beelzebub’s throne I read,

“Atone all ye gluttons who enter, for the lives in which austerity ye feared.”
Most of them mainly had papers and documents to sweep,
but the worst of them all was sentenced to clean the demon’s beard.

“Guide,” I said, “how will we scale this trash heap?”
He said, “don’t fret, for we must just sift through.
We can do it, it is not that deep.”

Beelzebub threw more litter at us; the pile grew.
But we crafted a tunnel,
and from this level of hell we withdrew.

Kiril Manchevski, Period 2