The Rebirth of Religion

                           The Rebirth of Religion

If horses flew with equine, stallion wings

Unfallen as archangels’ feathered shapes,

And Pegasus drank deeply from the springs

And falls of Peirene inspiration, drapes

Of godlike water for his throat, then we

Might pledge ourselves as poets did when they

Scooped visions from that flow.  A soaring spree

Of odes and epics might involve that spray

In faith and poetry.  Poseidon would

Cause Pegasus to fly around us all

And we would then believe, as poets should,

That gods are in and round us, if we trawl

For them in creeds of truth that fill this world

Where winging hooves still publish them unfurled.

Phillip Whidden