We Prophets Poem by Daniel Brick

Long ago, when I was young,
and what people thought
mattered to me, we prophets
were despised by everyone,
young and old, rich and poor,
devout or pagan. Who or what
they were mattered as little as
a single leaf on a massive oak tree:
they all equally despised us.
We were a sorry company, lean,
pock-marked, smelly, weak
to the point of fainting in a crowd,
clinging to each other. We walked and walked.
Some of us were counting measures,
learned the mathematics of multiple shapes,
and applied to our work chants. Then
a bright angel appeared among us, shining and glowing,
he led us once again in dance, a dance
which tightened around our bodies,
as we assumed the angel's movements
in daylight, and only then realized
we were living angelic lives.

Each of us felt the Hand of God
touch his head, again and again
we felt the touch, both gentle and firm,
absolutely a touch of grace,
I have been smiling ever since!

If you need to know things which you
will never profit from or simply enjoy,
I will tell you of a life of service,
interrupted by assignments and missions
and hovering around artists as they struggle
to make the marriage of Truth and Beauty
a reality on earth. And we dive deeply
into your wounded psyches, we wrestle
in that electric space of time and space,
and feel our physical beings momentarily
expand in angelic proportions. Trust me,
there are so many things awaiting us
once we have completed our apprenticeship,
you will say, This Mortal Life is vexed
into a temporary glory. Oh! Oh! Everything
will unfold, open out, become a thousand times
more than itself... and keep opening out,
into space and time as they gradually
become Eternity....

(This poem was inspired by the Prophet Poems of
Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander Pushkin, and
the piano music of Alexander Scriabin.)