Dante's Steps



"Dante’s Steps"

Close your eyes,
within the darkness
a different spectrum 
of colours emerge

the light like stardust
in your solivagant dreams
breathes life into your neverending
nacre imaginings,

downwards like piercing shards
of stained glass, the uplifting occurs,
striking lightning into a mind gone riotous,
some sense of poetic calm new religion arrives

like faith in self restored, this re-birth

eventually discovered within all storms, 
there is shelter in these woods,
where strange gods call you in
to find and explore your safe centre, your Return

Calliope sings you through,
you paint adamantine blue skys midnight blue
walking a thin line between redamancies, 
the torn veils through clouds you experience

shatter the light and darkness 

the sargasso in-between 
waves an ocean at you, like a Galilee lake 
where masters crossed imprints,
bare-feet mirages before you

from the body of your work
something shining, momentous
and otherworldly emerges,
it carries its canvas like a shield

to the very top of that mountain
and places it there facing inwards,
eternal like some light emitting diode,
the dioptric fresnal lens calls in the Others

walking up that steep incline towards you

in front of them your words,

like lustrous stars falling, paint a story
each thought in each word - they may collect 
like treasures, if they so choose,
to remember for some better dream,

in solitary measures each used as keys

awakening in those who also choose 
to take such holy epiphanies
through kindred ghosts, 
such ascensions are achieved

here, 
love’s diadem
is worn like a pulsing sign, next to it all, 
the canvas stands for all its worth

stories laid like sacraments, 

the meanings married 
for better or for worse
on a common alter
without constraint of time, 

words and thoughts 
are mercilessly reviewed
all drama is acknowledged
all drama is dissolved

in this heaven 
Dantes footsteps 
are worn multi-coloured 
all robes divested 

what is revealed beneath it all, 
outside the transient, above the cloistered
such mortal revelations are discovered spontaneously, 
another universe extreme exists, conscious and refined

that which remains resolute
throughout all time
calls you forward
pulls you in,

Immortal



Candide Diderot. ‘25






“This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.”
DH Lawrence








Alternative title: "Immortal Return"

museromancenarrative

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