The Poetry of R.E. Slater: Mar 31, 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."

The Heavenly Poet ever 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 after new life

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

Waking dreams springing to life in crescendoing stanzas

Rising like restless oceans spilling mountainous floods across

Earth's barren soul a'thirst divinity's Light and Life

Pulsating with every rising wind florid song and beauty.

Lively seen are fleeting lines of Grace on every sparrow's flight

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

Echoing Creation's poetic heartbeat flushed in chorused song

Songs to Divine Poet's unstilled desire to be, become.

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 - woven in cruel threads of dissident strains

Alongside threaded companions named grace and compassion.

Without which each living poem of grace and purpose

Is too easily flung as castaway upon evil, unjust seas

For every creature is a living line drafted in divine mystery

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

R.E. Slater
April 1, 2025

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