Longing for Prophets

Not for their ice-pick eyes, their weeping willow hair, and their clenched fists beating at heaven. Not for their warnings, predictions of doom. But what they promised. I don’t care if their beards are mildewed, and the ladders are broken. Let them go on picking the wormy fruit. Let the one with the yoke around his neck climb out of the cistern. Let them come down from the heights in their radiant despair like the Sankei Juko dancers descending on ropes, down from these hills to the earth of their first existence. Let them follow the track we’ve cut on the sides of mountains into the desert, and stumble again through the great rift, littered with bones and the walls of cities. Let them sift through the ashes with their burned hands. Let them tell us what will come after.