“
The kingdom of poetry"
This is like light.
This is light,
Useful as light, as charming
And enchanting…
…Poetry is certainly
More interesting, more valuable,
and certainly more charming
Than Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, the Atlantic Ocean
And other much admired natural phenomena.
It is useful as light, and as beautiful
It is preposterous
Precisely, making it possible to say
One cannot carry a mountain, but a poem can be carried all over.
It is monstrous.
Pleasantly, for poetry can say, seriously or in play:
“Poetry is better than hope,
“For poetry is patience of hope, and all hope’s vivid pictures,
“Poetry is better than excitement, it is far more delightful,
“Poetry is superior to success, and victory, it endures in serene blessedness
“Long after the most fabulous feat like fireworks has mounted and fallen.
“Poetry is far more powerful and far more enchanting animal
“Than any wood, jungle, ark, circus or zoo possesses.”
For poetry magnifies and heighten reality:
Poetry says of reality that if it is magnificent, it is also stupid:
For poetry is, in a way, omnipotent;
For reality is various and rich, powerful and vivid, but it is not enough
Because it is disorderly and stupid or only at times, and erratically, intelligent:
For without poetry, reality is speechless or incoherent:
It is inchoate, like the pomp and the bombast of thunder:
Its peroration verge upon the ceaseless oration of the ocean:
For reality glows and glory, without poetry,
Fake, like the red operas of sunset
The blue rivers and the windows of morning.
The arts of poetry makes it possible to say: Pandemonium.
For poetry is gay and exact. It says:
“The sunset resembles a bull-fight.
“A sleeping arm feels like soda, fizzing.”
Poetry resurrect the past from the sepulchre, like Lazarus.
It transforms a lion into a sphinx and a girl.
It gives a girl the splendor of Latin.
It transforms the water into wine at each marriage in Cana of Galilee.
For it is true that poetry invented the unicorn, the centaur and the phoenix.
Hence it is true that poetry is an everlasting Ark.
An omnibus containing, bearing and begetting all the mind’s animals.
Whence it is that poetry gave and gives tongue to forgiveness
Therefore a history of poetry would be a history of joy, and a history of the mystery of love
For poetry provides spontaneously, abundantly and freely
The petnames and the diminutives which love requires and without which the mystery of love cannot be mastered.
For poetry is like light, and it is light.
It shines over all, like the blue sky, with the same blue justice.
For poetry is the sunlight of consciousness:
It is also the soil of the fruits of knowledge
In the orchards of being:
It shows us the pleasures of the city.
It lights up the structures of reality.
It is a cause of knowledge and laughter:
It sharpens the whistles of the witty:
It is like morning and the flutes of morning, chanting and enchanted.
It is the birth and the rebirth of the first morning forever.
Poetry is quick as tigers, clever as cats, vivid as oranges,
Nevertheless, it is deathless: it is evergreen and in blossom; long after the Pharaohs and the Caesars have fallen,
It shines and endures more than diamonds,
It is because poetry is the actuality of possibility, it is
The reality of the imagination,
The throat of exaltation,
The processions of possessions,
The motion of meaning and
The meaning of morning and
The mastery of meaning.
The praise of poetry is like the clarity of the heights of the mountains.
The heights of poetry are like the exaltation of the mountains.
It is the consummation of consciousness in the country of the morning!
”
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