Light on its shoulders
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guardai in alto e vidi le sue spalle vestite già de’ raggi del pianeta che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle.
I looked up and saw its shoulders already clothed in the rays of the planet that leads everyone straight along every road.
He looks up and sees the hill's summit already lit by the sun.
The sun is called a <i>planet</i> here in the old Ptolemaic sense, but its office is moral: it is the light that sets a traveler right on any road. After a night in the lake of the heart, the first grace is simply being able to see where up is.
Dante gives the hill <i>spalle</i>, shoulders, as though it were a body turning toward the dawn. The world is not neutral scenery in this poem; it leans, warms, and points.
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