The phrase "a scene of desolation" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a place or situation that is bleak, empty, or devoid of life, often evoking feelings of sadness or abandonment.
Example: "As we walked through the abandoned town, we were struck by a scene of desolation that lingered in the air."
Alternatives: "a picture of despair" or "a landscape of ruin".
He returned 11 months later to find a scene of desolation.
It was a scene of desolation repeated right through Britain as other towns and cities wedded to manufacturing lost their raison d'être.
Five days after a train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, the rural town resembles a scene of desolation.
Is the piece as we see it in the gallery a scene of desolation, or one in which a scrappy population survives and on which it will build?
Pin Point, where he spent his first six years, comes as close to a scene of rural desolation as is possible in an advanced society.
In it, tiny human figures pick their way through a scene of utter desolation in which the road has been almost obliterated.
It is a scene of urban desolation with gin-crazed Londoners -- charity children, mothers and babies, trades people, cripples, etc. -- shown dead or dying, fighting, or stupefied with drink.
It was a scene of utter desolation: broken windows, phones and plumbing ripped out of the walls, secret files blowing in the wind.
The school does not seem to have existed for long as Howitt commented in 1842, that it was "a scene of great desolation ... the windows for the most part, all along the front, are boarded up ... the whole of this large old house is now empty ... and in the most desolate state".
We saw the effect the next morning, a terrible scene of desolation laid out on a field edged with wild flowers.
"When he came to Charlotte Street, a notorious scene of desolation in the South Bronx, he decided not to do the obvious thing and build row houses or six-story apartment buildings there," Mr. Marcus said.
