After the Pilgrim has lost his sense of time while being absorbed in a conversation, he and Virgil have the tiny opening in the mountain rock wall pointed out them – symbolic of how hard it could be to find that glimmer of an idea or insight, that starts a bigger process of learning that might greatly enrich you and your future path.
at some point along the way, those souls
cried out in one voice: “Here is what you seek.”
A peasant, at the time the grapes grow ripe,
with one small forkful of his thorns could seal
an opening within his hedge more wide
than was the gap through which my guide and I
were forced to climb, the two of us alone,
once we had parted company with that flock.
And thus starts the real climb, in Purgatory.