The Power and Majesty of Poetry

“All the world’s a stage,”
the Bard emphatically declared.
“And all the men and women…
merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances.
And one man in his time plays many parts…
His acts being seven ages…”

We, all of us, like actors…
We, all of us, like actresses,
have our exits and our entrances.
And we indeed play many parts.

We wear a mask upon our faces…
That is the mask of our personas.
We are all superficial beings…
possessed with very deep interiors.

And yet we oft so play the part…
of being merely puppets…
pulled by the strings of our own accord.
The irony of being our own puppeteers.

We are, and yet we are not,
altogether in one fell swoop,
what we would feign to be…
Fallen angels seeking to be exalted.

Adamic beings we are as castaways.
Cast out from our Edenic legacies.
Once whole, now torn apart.
As refracted splintered shards of glass.

The English Bard of Stratford-on-Avon,
in the flowing glimmering ripples,
saw himself as image reflected
on a moving stage that he called Life.

And in this image of himself…
In this rippling Avon image,
he viewed mankind along with him…
He saw what we too now all see.

A Cartesian view is what he had…
His cogitation of the human species.
Rene Descartes said much alike:
“Cogito ergo sum…”
(“I think therefore I am.”)

The poet and the philosopher…
Two minds with similar thoughts.
Though set apart by time and space,
with similar cogitation.

Their thoughts as independent gifts,
configuring their views of life.
Their private thoughts enmeshed with ours.
Their thoughts becoming now our own.

A Shakespearean world we occupy
of all the world as being a stage.
Such stagecraft of his bewitches us
like puppets in a cauldron brewed.

A world brewed up
from sheer imagination
by poets and philosophers…
By artists of all stripes and colors.

That is the power of the poet’s craft,
to turn a dream into reality.
Transform himself…
And in this solo act of transformation,
transform the world.
And all of us along with it.

That is the power that a poet has.
That is the Godly power of creation.
Out of sheer darkness…
Out of seeming Nothingness,
to bear light…
dazzling shining light.

Light of brilliance to enlighten us.
Dazzling light of creation.
Light to endow the shadows we cast,
with sense of our reflection.

So now as wizened shadows,
we are gifted to behold with sight,
the outer reflection of ourselves,
reflecting on our hidden inner selves.

Reflection of our outer selves as puppets,
reflecting on the hidden sacred selves
of our own divinity…
Our outer darkness beholding inner light.

That is the power of poetry.
That is the majesty of poetry.
To elevate the lower self of puppetry
into a higher self of divine being.

To transform us from being puppets
into kings and queens of noble rank.
That is the alchemy of poetry.
To restore the lost to find the Self.

And in this noble act of passage,
to reclaim our divine birthright.
To remove ourselves from brokenesss.

The outer self in union…
once more with its royal inner self…
A reflected hidden self…
restored to wholeness.