As a man lies dying, the people around him pray, but he is not comforted. He fixes his attention on the shadow of a tree flickering on the wall and says there is no need for prayer. When he asks his kin-folk to leave, they go, and their absence seems to ease him. Still, some keep praying in a room across the hall, and the sound troubles him. He tests himself with a song he knows, but the note comes out hollow and harsh, like a bird’s cry. All the while, he wonders what those prayers could be saying. The mood is quiet and strained, suspended between life and death. The dying man feels cut off from the living and their rituals, caught instead by small physical things—a flickering shadow, a breeze on the wall—while the prayers become an uneasy background he cannot fully dismiss.
The Death Bed — Summary
All the time they were praying He watched the shadow of a tree Flicker on the wall.
There is no need of prayer, He said, No need at all.
The kin-folk thought it strange That he should ask them from a dying bed. But they left all in a row And it seemed to ease him To see them go.
There were some who kept on praying In a room across the hall And some who listened to the breeze That made the shadows waver On the wall.
He tried his nerve On a song he knew And made an empty note That might have come, From a bird’s harsh throat.
And all the time it worried him That they were in there praying And all the time he wondered What it was they could be saying.