Self-portrait of an Artist

The ancient poets animated
All sensible objects, including themselves, as deities;
To be adorned with properties
Of rivers, bones, wood, animals and mountains,
And geniuses they were called.

With the doors to the world expanding,
A system was needed to navigate them:
So commenced the enslavement of vulgar and
The extraction of many of the deities applied;
To be replaced with morals and wisdom.

Singular sacred hearts, with keys
Were given to the priesthood,
And the priesthood guarded them, prevailing,
With pronouncements that God had ordered them.

Seperated in caverns, isolated and alone,
Men and women looked to the doors to see,
But those doors were locked to them.
All the while the key, the key they possessed,
Lay hidden,
To animate their own chests.

About the poet/painter