Urban Purgatory

Pens, papers, stamps and ink

The life of a man who had everything

That’s what society says anyway.

But when “everything” is but paper –

Blue, red, yellow, plastic,

Is everything…

nothing?

The Elevator

Nine levels earthward,

To Hell or Heaven?

White circles drift through fog,

like the tortured insane, ensnared,

The silent march into Hell’s Pass.

The roads form a grid,

clawing up, reaching into the sky,

No curves, no personality

Just a ruler and a pen fabricating

Systematic death

Steel, concrete, oil, smoke,

Corpses.

The scuttling feet crawl along the pavement

Walking, seeing, hearing,

A colourful shade of grey

The veins of the heart pulse

Positive, negative

Back and forth, alternating

The leech leeches on the blood

And comes to life

In an explosion of colours and sounds

Ones and zeroes

A façade of life

That cloaks the grim reaper.

Going up

Up on top

He was the leader of all

A king peering through his wall of glass

Through icy air, devoid of life.

He was trapped.

And he wanted freedom.

And this man was one

Who always got he wanted

Sharp shards scatter the sky

Like droplets of water,

hurled towards the sun,

A cold blast of air

Crashed into his gut

The fall

From top to bottom

The cold, hard floor.

The Pearly Gates to Heaven.

Urban Purgatory – A Rationale

This poem is about one of the most prominent themes and issues in T.S Eliot’s poetry – the dehumanizing effects of a modern city and its socially dead inhabitants. This is done by following the observations of a upper-class businessman, one who has climbed to the top of the corporate ladder that has defined success in modern society. In doing this, the poem questions the true value of what society judges as most valuable – money, power and status.

Light is also shed upon the materialistic nature of urban life, as well its central focus on digital forms of entertainment and everyday activity. These ways of life are conveyed as being meaningless and a façade – behind the “colors and sounds,” there are only ones and zeroes, replicated a million times.

In the end, this poem reveals that sometimes the only way to escape “living death” is to die – as the businessman throws himself off the top floor of a skyscraper and falls to his death. Those who realize the truth about human society escape from “Urban Purgatory,” as the title depicts, and go to heaven, whereas those who do not are doomed to continue their meaningless lives for eternity.