Enemies

"And so we shall discourse!

You will impede and we shall build.

You will delay the structure and we shall temper our skill.

You will aim all your arrows and we shall uplift our shields.

While you will compose subtle strategies, we shall already occupy a new site.

And where we shall have but one way, you will have in persecution to try hundreds.

Your trenches will but point out to us the mountain path.

And when we direct our movements, you will have to compile a voluminous book of denials.

But we shall be unimpeded by these compilations.

Truly, it is not pleasant for you to enumerate all that is done against your regulations.

Your fingers will become numb as you count upon them all the cases of forbid-dances and denials.

Yet at the end of all actions, the strength will remain with us.

Because we dispelled fear and acquired patience, and we can no longer be disappointed.

And we will smile at each of your grimaces, your schemes and your silences.

And this, not because we are specially anointed, but because we do not love the dictionaries of negation.

And we enter each battle only on a constructive plan.

For the hundredth time we smilingly say: Thanks to you, enemies and persecutors.

You have taught us resourcefulness and indefatigability.

Thanks to you, we have found glorious mountains with inexhaustible beds of ore.

Thanks to your fury, the hoofs of our horses are shod with pure silver, beyond the means of our persecutors.

Thanks to you, our tents glow with a blue light.

You yearn to learn who we are in reality; where are our dwellings; who are our fellow-voyagers.

Because you have invented so many slanders about us, that you yourselves are hopelessly entangled.

Where is the limit?

At the same time, several keen people insist that it is not only useful but highly profitable for you to go our way, and that no one who has walked with us has lost anything, but has rather received new possibilities."

Source

• Roerich Nicholas. 'Praise to the Enemies.' In Shambhala. © Copyright 1930.
  

Nicholas Roerich Museum. n.p. n.d. Web. Accessed October 7, 2012. <http://www.roerich.org/nr.html?mid=wrtgs>.

License

• Copyright © Courtesy of the Nicholas Roerich Museum (New York)