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Jean Hollander, the author of several books of poetry, took on the translation of the verse — an already herculean task made more difficult by the challenge of re-creating Dante’s terza rima tercets in English.

A fixed form of nineteen lines: five tercets, a concluding quatrain, and a rhyme scheme tight enough to keep any feeling from spilling over the borders.

Listen to the first tercet of “The Smile”:

And because this tercet is itself a mirror-image, reflecting the opening stanza, we might imagine the poem's beginning again, with this other face, smiling largely, this other skinny, agile little body with its Kalashnikov.

Then, picking up the "moon" rhyme for the first line, and plainly echoing Fitzgerald, Thompson expands into a longer-lined, highly emotive tercet.