Technology Star Trek: Deep Space Nine · 2372

The Call of the Prophets

Unfinished poem by Akorem Laan

A celebrated Bajoran poem by Akorem Laan, left unfinished when he vanished into the wormhole two centuries ago and completed only after the Prophets returned him to his own time.

The Call of the Prophets is one of the works of Akorem Laan, a revered Bajoran poet of the twenty-second century, alongside Gaudaal's Lament and Kitara's Song. Every Bajoran schoolchild studies them, and Kira Nerys knows the poem as a fragment, since its author disappeared before he could finish it.
In the fourth-season Deep Space Nine episode Accession (2372), Akorem's lightship emerges from the wormhole, where the Prophets have healed him and held him outside time. He claims the title of Emissary and tries to restore the old caste system, until he and Sisko put the question to the Prophets themselves.
They send Akorem back to his own century. Afterwards Kira is puzzled to find that the poem now has an ending and always has had, a quiet sign that the Prophets do not much mind about linear history.