Page 29 - A Qualified Acceptance of Sorrow

offered to remove the scales from their eyes,
they chose only to remember their knowledge and power.

And suddenly I knew my companion’s name,
knew this was Raphael, Tobit’s healer, this
the guide and protector of Tobias.

8.

We came to a vast desert.
Here were those who had loved wealth
more than life.

They sat beneath a blazing sun
surrounded by beige sand dunes
eating wafer-thin gold coins.

As they ate their gold, sand blew
in their eyes, up their nostrils,
into their mouths –

Being obsessed, they were unaware of the irony
that, like small children of the starving poor,
they ate dirt.

Sweat dripped down their faces, mingled
with the sand, moistened the coins lifted to their lips.
No longer able to stand, they sat

day after day, driven by compulsion
to eat thin shining disks,
oblivious to anything but gold.

What could save them
from this meaningless consumption?
I asked.

Ah, with vision and imagination atrophied,
these and many others can only be transformed
by another’s compassionate intervention.

Couldn’t we just take the gold away?
I asked. Oh, but it is all illusion –
It is a fantasy they’ve chosen;