‘One thing only is needful.’ I once knew a saint who died,
as all saints do. He appeared to me in dreams, seated before a large book open
before him on a table. He was correcting it in pencil, saying, ‘I’m editing the
works of the poet here; it’s what I’ve returned to do. But I can’t be turned
aside from it, because my time is limited.’
As with
Proust, who thought the world of sleep a separate room, into which we enter
from daylight reality to meet another cast of characters, a different script,
an altered life, I’m bemused to find the dead moving and speaking in dreams.
Surely such visitations have meanings, beyond psychology?
Do the
beloved dead return, giving touches of comfort or understanding unhoped for in
waking hours? Can warnings be given, answers to dilemmas, instructions, pleas?
What is the one thing needful?
Hundreds of
bodies scattered across the road, in places far distant from one another,
maybe. What was the one thing needful? From what must one not be turned aside?
Where are the words of the poet, what are we here to do? We are not saints, but
sinners, and our time is limited.
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