Two Political Speeches And A Hermit's Monologue Poem by Daniel Brick

The Consul and Head of Government:

These are the days of Resolve
and Backbone, when the aesthetic
gives way to the moral, and the moral
to the necessary. Years of experience
and power have made us the skilled adepts.
We alone in this community can be trusted
to make way for the future's timely arrival.
We have written encyclopedias of our history,
and one truth has prevailed, at once simple
and complete: the WHOLE is greater than
its parts, and must be our foremost concern.
Those of us who live small live are of small
concern. Those who live middling lives serve
the WHOLE and are expendable after their service.
But those whose vision is transcendent, those
who can envision an eternal form for the WHOLE,
those special few both serve and thrive. This is
the essence of wisdom. The gods we worship are gods
of power: they have ordained the maintenance
of the WHOLE, and achieving that end is our total
destiny. Future encyclopedias will record this:
our steadfast service to the WHOLE, our loyalty,
our resolve and backbone across the centuries.

A TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE:

They say openly most of us are
fuel for the machinery of the WHOLE
to consume. Our souls are surely forfeit
to the same machine that grinds our bodies
back to the original dust. As we blink out
one by one like lanterns after a feast,
these transcendent ones preen and pose and
display their fine taste in clothes and manners
manners. Such was their education, nothing
more lofty than fashion... At those festivals
they sponsor, we can stuff ourselves with wine
and meat, and we feel the surfeit of abandon -
for a few drunken days and nights. Then comes
the reckoning, when they declare they will take
by right our food, our freedom. Our bodies can
endure this hardship, we have the resolved backbone
they lack. But our souls are bereft, they require
the freedom to reach that place purged of aristocrats.
Friends, I envision a day, even now being prepared
in a cosmic alembic, when the calculations of
the WHOLE are abandoned, and we revive the simple life,
the life good for all. We resolve to seize the future
to attain our glory, body and soul!

A HERMIT-POET IN THE HIGH HILLS

We have trudged along the mountain path
for over two hours of silence. But we can
talk now. I wanted you first to experience
the silence we love and seek every day.
I need the discipline of silence to finish
my epic poem, others are polishing philosophical
essays, and still others study the Earth or
the Stars. And one among us is writing about
Love! All this we do in these heights: against
the background of the City's materialism and
waste. If you truly wish to join our community,
you must make resolutions... Look, my friend,
look at that immense cloud bank in the west.
Its light slanting as it descends to briefly
shower us with pure energy. It may also inspire
your poem, or mine, or both. At very least -
listen closely - it will create in each of us
an inner state indistinguishable from prayer...
There are those below for whom cloud, light,
inner state, and prayer are meaningless. They
have no access to wonder. And this landscape
is too rugged for them, so they keep their distance
from us. You may conclude we scoff at their pretense
as philosophers. No, we don't. In fact we wish them well,
in fact we would help them if they asked. Everything,
all of us and the creatures, and trees, and waterways,
everything coheres into a wholeness of being they are
blind to, you have sensed this wholeness. What I can
tell you: it is your destiny - seize it now forever!