What One Has Created
If we say the idea of God
is merely a poetic idea,
even the supreme poetic idea,
and that our notions of heaven and hell
are merely poetry not so called,
even if poetry involves us vitally,
the feeling of deliverance,
of a release, of a perfection touched,
of a vocation so that all men may know the truth
and that the truth may set them free—
if we say these things
and if we are able to see the poet
who achieved God and placed him
in his seat in heaven in all His glory,
the poet himself, still in the ecstasy of the poem
that completely accomplished his purpose,
would have seemed,
whether old or young,
whether in rags or ceremonial robe.
a man who needed what he had created,
uttering hymns of joy that followed the creation.
This may be a gross exaggeration of a very simple matter.
but perhaps that remark is true
of many of the more prodigious things
of life and death.
—- essay, The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet p. 51
From The Necessary Angel by Wallace Stevens
