"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Thursday, April 3, 2025

R.E. Slater - Wastelands. Broken Silence.




Wastelands

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT


I had come upon wastelands where chapels leaned,
Holding dead, dry assembly doors shut and stilled,
And ravaged pews littered every broken ravine,
Amid a mourning wind circling the fallen hills.

I remembered songs once sung in trust -
In bright eyes uplifting beyond the nave -
But now conviction had become like dust,
Abandoned within a desert's heavy silence.

Curiously faith and hope had not failed,
The twinning paths 'neath rotting steeples,
Nor along solitary darkened lands and skies,
Trudged forbidden passages on leadened steps.

My burning experience came not by flame,
Nor by dull beast with gaze of fair Bethlehem -
But by the slow unwind of heavy heart and soul -
On unanswered prayers killed mid requiem.

Fey above my head shone stars aloof and cold,
And all about lay uncaring world in measured hum -
Yet somewhere deep within I knew, I knew...
The old belief would not be born again.

There would be no Second Coming,
This terrible land of fallen belief -
Where far within lived deconstruction,
Filling with tombstones about, within.


R.E. Slater
April 3, 2025

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved

*A personal note: Some years ago, and quite belated in life, I had come to a crushing loss of belief but not of faith. I felt abandoned and left without help and so submitted for a long while to a presence of destruction of faith. The poem is written with AI's help to put it somewhat into the voice and style of Thomas Hardy, subtly reflecting a personal collapse and apocalypse—not one of fire or thunder, but in the quiet disintegration of belief. Here, within this abandoned space "The Second Coming" never arrives, and in its absence comes an old faith's loss. - R.E. Slater



Broken Silence
by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT


I did not lust a throne of light,
Nor trumpet-song beyond the air;
I only paused beneath the night,
To find a pulse of presence there.

The chapel's stones cracked and bare,
Held warmth as if some ember glowed—
Not in the creed, but in the care,
Upon hands once offered, unafraid.

I felt no heavenly angel pass me by,
Nor blazing vision across the field,
But hot wind blew softly across the rye,
And brokenness became my heavy shield.

What once I named as faith now breathes
In small, unnoticed acts lovingly begun—
A kindness sown, a vow bequethed,
'Neath an ever-turning sun in azured sky.

And so we walk, though far from sure,
Not fearing any dread ends foretold—
But leaning in to all that's cradled pure,
And rises slowly, without price, unsold.


R.E. Slater
April 3, 2025

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved

*Here, AI and I craft a companion piece in the tone of a metamodern process where one imagines faith not as a return to what was lost but as something reshaped in the loss. Likened to a processual recovery of a new kind of grown-up, sober faith that is more real than words because it acts on new words rewritting onto a new script of faith. A faith which isn't the end of faith but a becoming of faith. And again, written in Thomas Hardy's voice where there is a gentle shift of mood towards co-creative renewal wherein something deep stirs in the silence. Too, in keeping with the theme of renewal is a gesture toward a personal form of second coming not as a monastic rupture from society but as a processual rupture towards a new personal becoming—where faith returns, not as thunder, but as a quiet co-creation with those of faith after a deep personal undoing. - R.E. Slater

* * * * * * *



Poems About Second Comings


My question to ChatGPT: Are there any poems which speak to the the idea of "the Second Coming" besides Yeat's poem?

ChatGPT said:

Yes, many poets have written about the idea of “The Second Coming” beyond W.B. Yeats, though his is perhaps the most iconic in modern literature. Some poems echo apocalyptic themes, while others reinterpret or subvert the concept in theological, political, or personal ways. Here are a few examples, ranging from classical to contemporary, that engage with the idea of a second coming—whether it be Christ’s return, a revolutionary upheaval, or spiritual renewal:


1. T.S. Eliot – “The Hollow Men” (1925)

Though not explicitly about the Second Coming, it dwells on the spiritual and eschatological failure of modern humanity:

This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.

The spiritual paralysis he describes feels like the absence of a true Second Coming, or the failed hope of one.


2. Langston Hughes – “Christ in Alabama” (1931)

A powerful and subversive take on Christ’s identity, race, and suffering:

Christ is a nigger,
Beat and black:
Oh, bare your back.

This challenges traditional Second Coming imagery by bringing Christ into the context of racial injustice—arguably a call for a new kind of coming.


3. Denise Levertov – “The Second Coming” (1981)

Levertov directly reinterprets Yeats’s poem and opposes its bleakness with a vision of divine presence in the world—not through violence, but through love.

...the second coming will not be the second coming of Yeats’ rough beast.


4. William Blake – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

Blake often writes apocalyptically, and his prophetic works teem with Christ figures and reinterpretations of divine return:

For everything that lives is Holy.

Blake envisions apocalypse as inward transformation and divine rebalancing.


5. Lucille Clifton – “blessing the boats” (1990s)

Though not explicitly about the Second Coming, Clifton’s poem feels eschatological in tone—a hopeful, inward apocalypse:

may the tide / that is entering even now / the lip of our understanding / carry you out...

Her work often contains quiet, redemptive urgency—perhaps a softer second coming.


6. Wendell Berry – “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” (1973)

A political-spiritual revolution as a kind of second coming of sanity and faithfulness:

Practice resurrection.

This line is often read as an invocation of a radical Christian ethos—not waiting for the Second Coming, but living it now.


7. Margaret Atwood – “The Second Coming” (short poem)

Atwood plays with dystopian messianism and irony, suggesting the "next" coming might not be divine at all:

They say he will come again / But they don't say when.

Her tone is skeptical—hinting at the dangers of blind waiting.



ChatGPT said:

Would you like one written in the style of process theology or metamodern renewal? I'd be happy to draft an original one with those themes if you'd like.

Me:
Please list other poems entitled "The Second Coming."

ChatGPT said:

Great! Let’s look at some actual poems titled “The Second Coming” — there are several beyond Yeats that use this exact title, each with their own spin. Here's a sampling of notable ones:


1. W.B. Yeats – The Second Coming (1919)

We have to begin with the classic, which sets the tone for many future poems:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

This poem captures a vision of cyclical history, chaos, and a terrifying rebirth—rather than the triumphant return of Christ.


2. Gwendolyn Brooks – The Second Coming (published in In the Mecca, 1968)

Brooks’ poem directly addresses Black urban life and civil rights. Her "Second Coming" is social, radical, and grounded in political critique and empowerment. Though less well-known than Yeats's, it’s a fierce reclamation of the title for racial justice.


3. William Everson (Brother Antoninus) – The Second Coming (from The Residual Years, 1948–1968)

A Catholic mystic and poet, Everson uses the title to reflect on the return of Christ but fuses it with intense erotic and spiritual imagery. His take is intimate and theological, expressing longing and awe.


4. Peter Porter – The Second Coming (late 20th century)

An Australian-born British poet, Porter uses irony and dark humor to critique contemporary society’s expectations of salvation or destruction. His "Second Coming" is absurdist, casting doubt on whether any messiah could survive the modern world.


5. James Merrill – The Second Coming (from The Changing Light at Sandover, 1982)

Though it’s not a standalone poem, Merrill uses the phrase in a deeply metaphysical and esoteric context. His "Second Coming" becomes layered with psychic transmissions, occult meanings, and a postmodern twist.


6. Alternative & Indie Poets (online & self-published)

There are numerous poems titled The Second Coming on platforms like Poetry Foundation, PoemHunter, AllPoetry, and literary journals—many contemporary poets re-use the title to:

  • Echo Yeats ironically or critically

  • Reflect on current events (e.g. 9/11, COVID, climate change)

  • Reimagine divine return in feminist, queer, or postcolonial frameworks

  • Express personal spiritual transformation

A few examples:

  • Atwood’s poem (mentioned earlier)

  • “The Second Coming” by Drew Dellinger, linking environmentalism and cosmic hope

  • “The Second Coming” by Bhanu Kapil (experimental and fragmented, blending migration, trauma, and futurism)


ChatGPT said:

Would you like me to curate a PDF or text compilation of several poems titled “The Second Coming”? Or write a new one, inspired by process theology or current metamodern moods?

You said: Are there any by Thomas Hardy?

ChatGPT said:

Great question — while Thomas Hardy never wrote a poem explicitly titled “The Second Coming”, he did deeply engage with apocalyptic, eschatological, and religious disillusionment themes, especially around the decline of traditional Christian faith and the loss of divine order in the modern world.

Though he doesn't directly name a poem The Second Coming, several of Hardy’s poems feel like reflections on the idea — either yearning for, questioning, or grieving the absence of such an event. Here are a few that you might find especially resonant:


🔹 “God’s Funeral” (1910)

This is probably Hardy’s closest poetic meditation on the theme:

I saw a slowly-stepping train—
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar—
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

Hardy imagines the death of God — a processional mourning of the loss of divine presence. It’s not the Second Coming… it’s the Second Leaving. The God once present has faded into absence.


🔹 “The Oxen” (1915)

A subtler, bittersweet poem reflecting on faith lost and yet still longed for, set during Christmas:

Now they are all on their knees,
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

The speaker wants to believe, even though they know better. It’s a quiet lament — the hope of a Second Coming flickering against modern doubt.


🔹 “Channel Firing” (1914)

Set just before World War I, this poem imagines God awakening the dead from their graves due to the sound of naval gunnery — but only to say: Not yet.

It seemed a hundred fires were burning / The world’s new shellfire.

God delays the Judgment Day, knowing humanity isn’t ready — or perhaps is beyond saving. This poem could be Hardy’s most ironic take on the Second Coming, suggesting divine inaction or indifference in the face of destruction.


🔹 “A Christmas Ghost Story”

Also features a mysterious Christ figure:

“Peace upon earth!” was said.
We sing it, and pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass,
We’ve got as far as poison-gas.

This bitter indictment of religious failure in wartime history questions the meaning or effectiveness of Christ’s first coming—let alone a second.


🌀 Hardy's Theological Vision

Hardy’s worldview is shaped by a melancholic agnosticism. He rejected dogmatic Christianity but still ached for cosmic meaning, often confronting the void left by the absence of a Second Coming. For Hardy, the real apocalypse may already have happened—when faith failed.


Monday, March 31, 2025

R.E. Slater - The Divine Poet



Dante and Beatrice at the gates of Paradise, by Dore


The Divine Poet

by R.E. Slater


"Ecce Vox antiquior - 
non mea, sed iam mea fit."

"Behold, a Voice more ancient than mine - 
not mine, yet now it becomes mine."


God is the poet who sings the world into being with love and purpose

Each syllable a sunrise, each promised phrase a rushing stream

Thundering from the silences of ancient time lusting for new life

Spilling from darkness's voids where dreams once slept dreamlessly.


Waking dreams springing to life in crescendoing stanzas

Rising like restless oceans spilt mountainous floods across

Earth's barren soul gulping down divinity's soul of light and life

Pulsating every rising wind with florid songs and beauty.


Fleeting lines of Grace are lively seen on every sparrow's flight

Or in Divine's refrain on nightjar's incessant noisy trilling

O'er whelming Creation's every heartbeat in chorused echo

to Divine Poet's name unstilled it's craved desire to be, become.


But sadly, not all songs nor poems are ever so gilded or gentle,

Each beauty borne, each jagged life birthed, comes stitched

In grief and flame weaving cruel life's many dissident strains

With wanting companions of stilled grace and compassion.


Without which each living poem of grace and purpose

Are too easily flung as castaways upon evil, unjust seas

For every creature is a living line drafted in divine mystery

Revised through pain but always sung by love's final verse.



R.E. Slater
April 1, 2025

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved



Monday, January 20, 2025

Tintern Abbey - Poems & Illustrations


Tintern Abbey

Tears, Idle Tears
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson  (1809 – 1892)


Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

- ALT


"Tears, Idle Tears" is a lyric poem by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It was originally embedded in his 1847 narrative poem The Princess, where it is sung by a court maiden. The poem is an emotionally intense meditation on the passing of time and the loss of friends and loved ones. This subject matter might be partly explained by the fact that Tennyson wrote the poem after a visit to the destitute Tintern Abbey, near the grave of a dear friend. - Lit Charts, for further poem analysis




Poetical Tintern

“Descriptions of Tintern Abbey should be written on ivy leaves, and with a poet’s pen, for no other do justice to the air of solemn grandeur and religious melancholy reigning within its delicate cloisters”
— Catherine Sinclair, Hill and Valley, 1838

Tintern Abbey was as much a magnet for poets as for professional and amateur visual artists in the period. The most famous literary work associated with the site is William Wordsworth’s Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July,13, 1798. But it is interesting to note that there was large body of verse on the subject of the Abbey and topographical poems on the region well before the end of the eighteenth century. Syned Davies’ 1745 “A Voyage to Tintern Abbey, in Monmouthshire, from Whitminster in Gloucestershire” is the earliest represented here. The selection of authors and verses gathered here represents a small fraction of the surviving poetical descriptions, effusions and reflections inspired by the ruins. Those anthologized by Charles Heath in his Historical and Descriptive Account of the Ancient and Present State of Tintern Abbey, a guide sold locally at the Beaufort Arms, were carried into the Abbey itself, and perhaps read there.


Works on Display:
Many poets have written poems about Tintern Abbey, including: 
  • Rev. Dr. Sneyd DaviesWrote "Epistle IV" in 1745, which describes his voyage to Tintern Abbey from Whitminster 
  • Rev. Duncomb DavisWrote a "Poetical description of Tintern Abbey" around 1790 
  • Edmund GardnerWrote a "Sonnet written in Tintern Abbey" in the 1790s 
  • Edward JerninghamWrote "Tintern Abbey" around 1800 
  • Rev. Luke BookerWrote an "Original sonnet composed on leaving Tintern Abbey" 
  • John CunninghamWrote "Elegy on a Pile of Ruins", which was published in 1761 
  • William MasonWrote an excerpt from "The English Garden: A Poem" 
  • Alfred Lord TennysonWrote "Tears, Idle Tears" 
  • Allen GinsbergWrote "Wales Visitation" 
  • Matthew ArnoldWrote "The Buried Life" 
William Wordsworth's Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey was published in 1798 as part of his collection Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's poem was inspired by his second visit to Tintern Abbey, and his reflections on the transience of time and the natural sublime. 

ILLUSTRATIONS OVER THE YEARS OF TINTERN ABBEY

Tintern Abbey by Benjamin Williams Leader
Tintern Abbey: The Crossing and Chancel, Looking towards
the East Window 
1794, Joseph Mallord William Turner
Edward Dayes, Tintern Abbey & the River Wye, 1794,
Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester
Tintern Abbey, oil painting by William Havell, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Painting by Benjamin Williams Leader, 1883
Tintern Abbey with all of the foliage removed by the government
Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey and the River Wye