Here you will find the Poem Rubens' Hell of poet Kenneth Slessor
VENUS with rosy-cloven rump And rings of straw-bright flying hair Looks in the glass that slaves are plying Not for her own face floating there, But for the sly and curious gaze Of Rubens, through the keyhole prying. Warm flesh of gods, by light embayed, And drifting daemon-bones within That sweep like music up and down To pouts and cups of ivory skin, Firm-valleyed croup, and swagging arm In whose embankment bracelets drown? Do you remain, you strokes of paint, With Venus mocked and Rubens dead And Beauty sold for an antique And microscopes raised up instead? Still are your old adherents true; Rubens is there, if he could speak. Rubens is there in your high room, Rubens it is who blows his breath To fix you laughing in the glass, Who keeps a castle here from death While schools go out and fashions fall And microscopes and movements pass. This castle-keep of joys conceived But never sucked is Rubens' hell, Is Rubens' limbo, cut and won From darkness. Here he comes to dwell. Man's heaven is the place he builds By thoughts imagined and things done. Some choose a paradise of gas, And some, by pious deeds below, The heavenly butter-hatch for flunkeys; Who dream of nought to nothing go. Therefore I'd sooner Rubens' hell Than go to heaven with the donkeys.
