Showing results for "The Prophet" in Epic

This groundbreaking Jamaican narrative poem takes on history, faith, sex, and poetry itself. As 24-hour television - belching out the swaggering voices of American hellfire preachers - competes with dancehall, slackness, and ganja for Jamaican minds, Clarice and Thalbot preach their own conflicting visions. Clarice's visions give her power; Thalbot is at the mercy of every wandering spirit. But when Clarice, under the cover of darkness, 'sins' on the beach, Thalbot alone knows of her fall. He sets out to journey to denounce the prophetess and warn the Ninevite city of its coming doom.

Originally published in 1923, the book begins with a man named Almustafa living on an island called Orphalese. Locals consider him something of a sage, but he is from elsewhere and has waited twelve years for the right ship to take him home. From a hill above the town, he sees his ship coming into the harbor, and realizes his sadness at leaving the people he has come to know. The elders of the city ask him not to leave. He is asked to tell of his philosophy of life before he goes, to speak his truth to the crowds gathered. What he has to say forms the basis of the book.

ALMUSTAFA, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn unto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth. And in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping, he climbed the hill without the city walls and looked seaward; and he beheld his ship coming with the mist. Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul.