An implausible imagination

"In the round valley I saw a people weep
As they came on, all silent, at the pace
Our Litanies, in their processions keep.
When deeper down my eyes perused the place,
Each appeared strangely to be wrenched awry
Between the upper chest and lower face.
For toward the reins the chin was screwed, whereby
With gait reversed they were constrained to go,
For to look forth this posture would deny.
Perhaps by palsy's overmastering throe
Some may have been thus quite distorted, yet
I ne'er saw such, nor think it could be so.
Reader, so God vouchsafe thee fruit to get
Of what thou readest, think now in thy mind
If I could keep my cheeks from being wet
When this our image in such twisted kind
I saw, that tears out of their eyelids prest
Ran down their buttocks by the cleft behind.
Truly I wept, apposed upon the breast
Of the hard granite, so that my Guide said:
'Art thou then still so foolish, like the rest?
Here pity lives when it is rightly dead.
What more impiety can he avow
Whose heart rebelleth at God's judgment dread?'"
Inferno, Canto XX, Lines 7-30

-Dante