A friend of 7 or 8 years was recently killed in a violent car accident with a tractor-trailer. I won’t say much about this, other than I’m still having trouble believing he won’t be around anymore. I won’t deny that after high school I didn’t speak to him as much as I should have, but my friends had recently assembled the weekly poker game that started so many years ago that him and I were both a part of. I only saw him a handful of times before this his death early Saturday morning. There isn’t much left I can say, and certainly nothing I can do about it. I was a little broken up by it yesterday, but I tend to get over events involving death because there isn’t any point in not accepting the reality of it.
I’ve enclosed this poem and it’s audio clip by William Carlos Williams. This is an early Williams poem entitled “Tract”.
*
Tract
I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists-
unless one should scour the world-
you have the ground sense necessary.
See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ’s sake not black-
nor white either – and not polished!
Let it be whethered – like a farm wagon -
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.
Knock the glass out!
My God – glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
the flowers or the lack of them -
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass -
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom -
my townspeople, what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.
No wreathes please-
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes – a few books perhaps -
God knows what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople -
something will be found – anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.
For heaven’s sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that’s no place at all for him -
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring him down – bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I’d not have him ride
on the wagon at all – damn him! -
the undertaker’s understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!
Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind – as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly -
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What – from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us – it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.html
^Section #7, then #2, you’ll see it.
enjoy
-Cm
6:43pm 6/15/08
