A Coney Island of the Mind, 13
Not like Dante discovering a commedia upon the slopes of heaven I would paint a different kind of Paradiso in which the people would be naked as they always are in scenes like that because it is supposed to be a painting of their souls but there would be no anxious angels telling them how heaven is the perfect picture of a monarchy and there would be no fires burning in the hellish holes below in which I might have stepped nor any altars in the sky except fountains of imagination
From A Coney Island of the Mind. Copyright © 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.