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I while back I posted the first part of a poem based on a book by James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld. Creating these poems was the best part of reading this book, for me. He's not my favorite depth writer but he was widely read and produced thought-provoking phrasing at times. The words in the poem are slightly revised to create verse. Here it is:

Dream Underworld Second Half

Digesting the day’s residues 
into soul-stuff
Effective as long as it remains alive
as enigmatic image
rather than try to replace its intelligence 
with our own.
The dream is already working upon our consciousness
Translation falsifies its ambiguity.
Fished into daylight

How much an art it is
To recall 
the cloudy region
in its elemental condition

Poesis
misleading polyvalence
an Inherent tension of opposites
for the dream is soul itself and
soul is endless

Desire and fear
involve the entire soul
spare parts stripped
fused into new unities
out of life and into psyche
deforming and forming 
at the same moment

The disruptive element
strikes its type into the plasticity of imagination
opus contra naturam
work against nature
ensouled
crafting toward a lysis - a way out

The natural person is a complexity.
Gods clothe themselves in our complexes
Inititiatory mysteries 
hidden events in the soul
through this dark light

Familiar memories, 
on too stable bedrock.
Deforming restores the image’s 
capacity to perturb,
paradigms stir the soul’s memoria

Do not undo the dream’s undoing
respond to its work 
with the likeness of our work
speak like the dream, imagine like it
Take life out of assumptions, previews
the bricoleur

Psychic stuff cooks in the night
a fundamental soul-making
krasis of elements
worked souls giving a sense of what matters
on deep home ground

Projections
Overvalued ideas
Imagine them into a fresh sense
Converting matter into inner psychic depth

Tangles of dream-thoughts
Reach down to the unknown
deep in the body of the night
See through what we cling to
Bring about a change in us
the psychopomp's work

Animals totems 
carriers of soul
help us see in the dark.
Follow the movement of their spontaneity 
Spiders when we dread integration
imagining the power of our deep mind
weaving our fate into organizing intelligence

A fear-dog obars the way to the deep
piggishness has hidden holiness
Animals constellate soul doctors, familiaris, soul-brother-sister

Fixation on earthbound problems 
stop soul movement
Mnemosyn, mother of musing
archetypal remembrance
Carnival rebellion against dayworld order
deliteralizes convention
enters fantastic perspective 
yearning not for outward success
nor inward salvation
but for depth itself

What matters is not how the story comes out
but what region of the soul is on stage
Look through smoky glasses
the mind’s eye dilates in the dark
seeing past manmade defenses against soul
stops riding the horse of hubris
taking an attitude of unknowing

Dream work is an imaginative craft
dayworld distorts the images
the mysteries and initiations of soul
There is Imaginal love in dreamwork
dreams mean well for us

Anamnesis appears in its own time
myth opens
working in our soul
embracing depth, dreams show their love
the psyche doing its soul-work
images being the only positions 
dreams take

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Are there lines in this poem that touch you? Leave a comment or write to me if you wish.

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