What do poets see?

27/02/2026 Nilson Lattari

Poets don’t try to hide theories in their words. Their outlook goes beyond common sense, and they place words upon words to shape images they hold in their minds. Through these images, they imagine the difference between fiction and reality.
Poets don’t manipulate words to please anyone. They organise and arrange words to express their imagination. They do not see an organised world from which they take their images, because their worldview belongs to their rare and pure imagination. In their world, there are no lies or truths, because they only describe images and expressions that roam there. While they write about them, they reinterpret a version of reality that goes beyond our understanding.
Poets get lost in their fantasies not because they reject reality, but because they follow their own senses, which are far from ordinary human understanding. They move within ambiguous principles and look at the horizon of their world through a magical lens. They are certain they will find what no one else can see, or what others pretend to see. People prefer to remain watching shadows reflected on a comfortable wall, while poets stare at light.
Poets wear imaginary clothes and cross the window of imagination to reveal the world from another perspective. Their world exists beyond our sight, and in it, there are no colours exactly as we know them, because each colour has many meanings. Poets insist on translating them for us, even against the will of colours themselves. From a poet’s perspective, our reality can be translated into their world, because in that place, there are many ways to express feelings and hope.
Poets do not wish to possess or gain anything. They only want to stare into imagination with eyes that no one has. They want to touch what everyone longs to feel, and they place their bodies in the hands of a mermaid who sings far away.
Poets write with the eyes of imagination open and the eyes of reality closed. They imagine objects of desire, even when they do not know their shape, size or scale. Poets lend us their eyes and invite our interpretations.
In their imagination, the eyes themselves have no power to see images. Although poets see reality from many perspectives, they are not everywhere. They do not stand above the world to judge which events are better than others. Poets are not jealous of their visions – and they suffer because of this – because they are the only ones who can describe their objects of desire.
They will always feel that something is missing in their lives. They focus on the details of a poem and try to hide them from us. Even though they remain at the top of their own world, because even if they tried to translate it for us, they must use words that ordinary people cannot completely understand in the same way.
Poets are wandering souls without direction when they imagine unique objects and share them with others. Their struggle is unfair, because they try to communicate what people cannot see or recognise.
Poets are generous and ironic beings. They give meaning to beauty, and they know that without them, it might never be understood.