For poetry was all written
from 'The Poet' by Ralph Waldo Emerson

for poetry was all written before time was,

and whenever we can penetrate into
that region where the air is music,
we hear those primal warblings,
but we lose a word,
and substitute our own,
and thus
miswrite the poem;

for
the all-piercing, all-feeding, and
ocular air of heaven,
that
man shall never inhabit.

The religions of the world are the
ejaculations
of a few
imaginative men. The history
of hierarchies seems to show, that
all religion's error
consisted in making the symbol

too stark and
solid,
and, at last,
nothing
but an excess
of the ***** of language.



Transformation
from Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore

the soul    Thomas Moore said    is fostered
in the many turns of the labyrinth
making intimacy with the heart
a profound coupling of ego and soul
in deeps of intensity
deeps of fear
and
deeps of bliss

metamorphosis with artful participation
blushes the ivory to gold-tinged flowering
transforms by imagination
Narcissus


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 1995/2017