THE PROPHET

after A. S. Pushkin Tormented by hunger for the living God, I scoured for manna in the wilderness When a seraph, crossing my thorny path, Took me under his self-righteous wings. With hands drawn like ethereal dreams He touched the horizons of my sunken face: A teeming abyss stretched before my eyes Beneath the plenitude of a harvest moon. He struck the drums of my untuned ears With resounding news of nature’s prime. And I beheld the sky rise up like bread And heard mountains burst like cherubim And saw monsters swallowing the deep And felt the ripening of the lowly vine. Unleashing the fury of his right hand, The angel ripped out my crooked tongue And, within my mouth’s wild confines, Planted the wise serpent’s healing sting. Across the open vistas of my flesh He cut a path with his blazing sword And took my foolish heart by storm And filled its chambers with live coals. As I lay in the desert like a corpse, I heard God’s voice above the ground: “Arise, prophet, behold the earth. Move and be moved by my will. Leap over perilous seas and lands And on parched lips set my Word.”   Benjamin Sher October 1, 1999 [Published in SlavFile, Summer, 2001]