PITHY PRESCIENT PERSPICACITY 41313

Mikhail Lermontov

 

 

 

 

I've always thought my ontological imperative was to be a pianist. That's the path taken since childhood, struggling against physical infirmity and ambient injunction that made expression rife with prohibition. It has been the pursuit of a distant oasis mirage that evaporates on the horizon.

Then there's this uncontrollable, unbridled intuitive insight that's been with me since the very beginning. Despite getting me into all kinds of trouble, sometimes within inches of life threatening circumstance, I still call it as I see it sans keeping up appearances.

So, why do I feel so compelled to write these days? Granted, being a "writer" has been a recurrent subject conveyed during many consultations with psychics over the years. I would just dismiss the information given as non-relevant. Nonetheless, here I am preternaturally driven to essay on spiritual and political themes---again, edging me ever closer to the firing squad, the pyre, the gallows.

If what my trusted, psychic-extraordinaire friend, Andrew Brewer said is true. If I am indeed this poet/novelist/painter's present incarnation---because, I find it both alluring and confounding. Then, the illuminating conversation with insightful writer friend, Ann Radtke Curry, has helped to assuage lingering doubts as to validation. Thank you, dear friends, for throwing out bread crumbs as I make my way through the fogbank.

The prescient poem below was scribed in another time, another place long ago, in a far away land. Yet, it feels as though I could've just as easily written them concerning events playing out today:

PREDICTION, 1830

"There will come a dark time for Russia.
The tsar's crown will fall to the ground and,
the people will forget that they once loved him.
Many will be left with only the dead and blood for food;
Law will provide no shelter for innocent children and women.
When the plague of stinking, dead bodies
begins to rot amidst the grieving villages
and death stalking the living in its covered cowl.
When peace and quiet falls over those tormented regions
and the dawn reddens the river's waves:
On that very day there will appear a man of power
and you will recognize and know him,
by the sword in his hand:
and woe unto you! To your wailing, your groans;
he will just smile;
and everything about him will be horrible, gloomy,

concealed beneath his cloak-covered brow." ~ Mikhail Lermontov