Contemplating Hell

Contemplating Hell, as I once heard it,
My brother Shelley found it to be a place
Much like the city of London. I,
Who do not live in London, but in Los Angeles,
Find, contemplating Hell, that it
Must be even more like Los Angeles.

Also in Hell,
I do not doubt it, there exist these opulent gardens
With flowers as large as trees, wilting, of course,
Very quickly, if they are not watered with very expensive water. And fruit markets
With great leaps of fruit, which nonetheless

Possess neither scent nor taste. And endless trains of autos,
Lighter than their own shadows, swifter than
Foolish thoughts, shimmering vehicles, in which
Rosy people, coming from nowhere, go nowhere.
And houses, designed for happiness, standing empty,
Even when inhabited.

Even the houses in Hell are not all ugly.
But concern about being thrown into the street
Consumes the inhabitants of the villas no less
Than the inhabitants of the barracks.

Bertolt Brecht

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German playwright, poet, and theatre director of the 20th century. He established himself as a prominent literary figure by pioneering epic theatre, which aimed to provoke rational thought and social change in contrast to traditional forms of theatre. Brecht's notable works include "Mother Courage and Her Children" and "The Threepenny Opera."

Bertolt Brecht

On The Critical Attitude

Bertolt Brecht, Simple Poetry

On Reading A Recent Greek Poet

Bertolt Brecht, Simple Poetry

My Young Son Asks Me

Bertolt Brecht, Simple Poetry

Mack the Knife

Bertolt Brecht, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Lover In Hell

Eternally the choking steam goes up
From the black pools of seething oil....
    How merry
Those little devils are! They've stolen the pitchfork
From Bel, there, as he slept... Look! -- oh look, look!
They've got at Nero! Oh it isn't fair!
Lord, how he squeals! Stop it... it's, well -- indecent!
But funny!... See, Bel's waked. They'll catch it now!

... Eternally that stifling reek arises,
Blotting the dome with smoky, terrible towers,
Black, strangling trees, whispering obscene things
Amongst their branches, clutching with maimed hands,
Or oozing slowly, like blind tentacles
Up to the gates; higher than that heaped brick
Man piled to smite the sun. And all around
Are devils. One can laugh... but that hunched shape
The face one stone, like those Assyrian ...

Stephen Vincent Benét

The Tower Of Famine.

Amid the desolation of a city,
Which was the cradle, and is now the grave
Of an extinguished people, - so that Pity

Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of Oblivion's wave,
There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built
Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave

For bread, and gold, and blood: Pain, linked to Guilt,
Agitates the light flame of their hours,
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.

There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers
And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,
The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers

Of solitary wealth, - the tempest-proof
Pavilions of the dark Italian air, -
Are by its presence dimmed - they stand aloof,

And are withdrawn - so that the world is bare;
As if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror
Am...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The City Of The End Of Things

Beside the pounding cataracts
Of midnight streams unknown to us
'Tis builded in the leafless tracts
And valleys huge of Tartarus.
Lurid and lofty and vast it seems;
It hath no rounded name that rings,
But I have heard it called in dreams
The City of the End of Things.

Its roofs and iron towers have grown
None knoweth how high within the night,
But in its murky streets far down
A flaming terrible and bright
Shakes all the stalking shadows there,
Across the walls, across the floors,
And shifts upon the upper air
From out a thousand furnace doors;

And all the while an awful sound
Keeps roaring on continually,
And crashes in the ceaseless round
Of a gigantic harmony.
Through its grim depths re-echoing
And all its weary height o...

Archibald Lampman

The Irremediable

I.

A Being, a Form, an Idea
Having fallen from out of the blue
Into the Stygian slough
Where no eye of the sky ever sees;

An impetuous Angel, allured
By the love of the twisted and mean,
In the depths of a nightmarish dream
Like a swimmer who struggles for shore,

Contending in wretched distress
With a whirlpool that swivels along
Singing a madman's song,
Performing its dark pirouettes;

A bewildered man, miserably
Attempting a groping escape
Out of a place full of snakes,
Lacking the lamp and the key;

A damned soul fumbling down steps
Of an infinite stair without rails
At the edge of a gulf, with a smell
Betraying the clammy depths,

Where monsters watch below,
Whose eyeballs' glowing light
M...

Charles Baudelaire

Congenial Horror

From this bizarre and livid sky
Tormented by your destiny,
Into your vacant spirit fly
What tho~ghts? respond, you libertine.

Voracious in my appetite
For the uncertain and unknown,
I do not whine for paradise
As Ovid did, expelled from Rome.

Skies tom apart like wind-swept sands,
You are the mirrors of my pride;
Your mourning clouds, so black and wide,

Are hearses that my dreams command,
And you reflect in flashing light
The Hell in which my heart delights.

Charles Baudelaire

Hells Gate

Onward led the road again
Through the sad uncoloured plain
Under twilight brooding dim,
And along the utmost rim
Wall and rampart risen to sight
Cast a shadow not of night,
And beyond them seemed to glow
Bonfires lighted long ago.
And my dark conductor broke
Silence at my side and spoke,
Saying, "You conjecture well:
Yonder is the gate of hell."

Ill as yet the eye could see
The eternal masonry,
But beneath it on the dark
To and fro there stirred a spark.
And again the sombre guide
Knew my question, and replied:
"At hell gate the damned in turn
Pace for sentinel and burn."

Dully at the leaden sky
Staring, and with idle eye
Measuring the listless plain,
I began to think again.
Many things I thought of then,

Alfred Edward Housman