Old Man & Prophet

 Patrick Phillmore

 But there were no doors, no windows to look through, to be opened, to let the light in

The days passed over his gray head with frenzy

and the pervasive teeming voices of the times deafened him

The brutal city youngsters awoke with anguish caught in their throats

giving them a craving for violence.

The smashing of the highest windows of institutional buildings led to massacres

 

In outlaying territories

vast, colored nations taken away from their traditional nomadic ways produced countless broods that were plundered in civil wars, epidemics, slavery and hunger.

 A bard of mixed race, whose youthful days were giving way to maturity, was the only one to approach the already senile wise man, and he was the one who muttered the preceding facts to him.

 He was the first True Angel

whose cold fire would one day decimate mankind, extinguishing those not fit for the new days.

 A great inner compassion was distilled from his possessed words.

 The wise man returned to his tent on the outskirts of the city and sat on the floor, forgetting.