Helliotica

We are the damned - the strain and moil

That death had washed from earthly toil

Drawn down by tides of hell, we boil

Like toads within a torrid slime.

Our sins were great - a deadly charge

And yet less heavy than our fate

We pour through hell's alembic large

Each soul transformed to vital hate

The good that in our hearts remained

By sin untainted, now is one

With vileness cankeringly ingrained

By earth and hell we stand undone.

For that which earth unfinished left

the consummation of the pit

from out the insuperable cleft

to where its lords presiding sit.

And watch with contestless sight

we burn, by double test refined

to clearest evil - purged quite

of good or mercy from the mind.

Our souls are linked to vast despair

as to some nadir-founded rock

where never hope descends to mock

beyond the dip of terrene air.

We heighten to a hate that beats

in rage all impotently strong

against the worlds that league with wrong

whose pain each other's pain completes.

Would our gate were hands to draw

the lords of earth and hell beneath!

Would our hate were venomed teeth

to rend them through their mail of law!

Would that we might cleave with hate

the roof and base, and walls of hell

wrench at its pillars till they fell

with ruin indiscriminate!

Immovable it stands, with springs

of fire to tear its inward glooms

where from, ascending high, our fumes

are breath of incense to its kings.