The Poetry of R.E. Slater: 03/01/2025

"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

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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

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