Forever

Even in Dante’s inspired version,

Heaven and Hell don’t seem appropriate

For human habitation, being too static,

Too imbued with notions of the eternal.

Yes, for the sake of justice, the violent

Who get away with murder on earth

Should be made to feel a heat more fiery

Than the coals of rage that burned within them;

The betrayers of friends and patrons deserve a chill

Colder than the ice in their arctic hearts.

But shouldn’t their sentences have a limit?

Won’t their victims, the pillaged and trampled

And rolled to the wall, safe at last

In the balmy realm of the blessed,

Grow uneasy, eventually, with the thought

Of their oppressors in endless torment?

Won’t they decide a determinate stay

Is long enough? It’s not for us to object

If Abel throws down a rope at last to Cain,

If Jesus takes Judas by the hand.

So hell, if imagination wins out,

Ought to be slowly emptying,

And then heaven as well, as the saints

Return to earth to help the sinners

Learn what damage they can undo

If they give themselves to the effort,

And what damage they’ll have to leave as is.

--Carl Dennis