Moving along the sixth terrace, Dante hears a voice singing the 51st Psalm — Miserere mei — "Have mercy on me, O Lord." A crowd of souls passes. They are gaunt to the point of horror: their faces so hollow that eye sockets show OMO — the Latin word for "man," the letters O-M-O formed by the eye sockets and nose of the human skull, reminding them and all who see them of their essential humanity and mortality. Their flesh has been burned away; they look like men made of wax near flame. They are famished and parched — perpetually tempted by the hanging fruit and the water of the tree they must pass — and cannot reach it. The fruit withdraws whenever they approach; the water spills down the cliff face, always just out of reach. Tantalus revisited, with Christian precision.
Among them Dante recognizes — barely — Forese Donati, his dear friend and poetic sparring partner in life. He and Dante had once exchanged a series of ribald sonnets (the tenzone), insulting each other with cheerful vulgarity. Now Forese is barely recognizable beneath his emaciation. The reunion is moving and wry in equal measure. Forese explains that his wife Nella's tears and prayers have already brought him from Ante-Purgatory to here — her prayer accelerated his climb, which would have taken far longer. He praises his wife warmly. Then, unprompted, he launches into a denunciation of Florentine women who go half-naked in the streets, brazen and shameless — a prophecy that before long they will be forbidden by divine punishment to bare themselves so carelessly. The tenderness of the marital praise and the sharpness of the civic satire sit side by side, which is very Dante.