“On the morning of March 4, 1963, Flossie tried to awaken Williams in his room at 8:30 and found her husband, lifeless in bed, facing the wall. Her pediatrician son, Dr. Bill Williams, confirmed the finding, death at 79 attributed to “cerebrovascular thrombosis.” Williams was buried in Hillside Cemetery at Rutherford on a cold, rainy morning. The closed casket funeral service, simple, and without “a lot of religious stuff,” as Williams had requested, was conducted by a Unitarian minister. Nothing from the Bible was read, rather the minister intoned to the Rutherford citizens Williams’ frequently anthologized poem “Tract””
(Dr. Richard Carter, writing, in 1999, in – of all places – The Annals of Thoracic Surgery)
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 weathered—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.
March 4 – (see above – see his grave-stone) – The great William Carlos Williams passed away on this day.
More from Carter, (recounting the extreme challenges Williams had to face in his later years):
“Williams suffered his first incapacitating stroke in 1951, forcing him to retire after 40 years of practice. This incident proved to be a prelude to another major stroke in August 1952, resulting in paralysis of his upper right side, partial blindness, and a speech impediment.
For the last 11 years of his life, Williams was forced to write and use his electric typewriter with only his nondominant left hand….After the big stroke in 1952, as physician-poet Merrill Moore....observed, “it was (truly) remarkable that preservation of the creativity center of Williams’ brain allowed him to produce an astonishing volume of writing (which it did) in the mid 1950s”. He completed his long poem, Paterson and the Pulitzer-prize-winning Pictures From Brueghel, among other things.
(Allen, Peter, Jack and Gregory visited in ’57)
Carter goes on:
“In 1958, Williams survived another succession of progressively debilitating strokes. In addition, in late 1959, the emaciated but courageous Williams underwent a successful sigmoid colon resection for a malignant tumor in the New York Hospital. (He) went steadily downhill after the surgical operation, with additional small strokes, rendering him hardly able to read, with failing memory, even confusional – a condition lasting about 2 years…”
His death, in 1963, then, was not a surprise
His persistence, his resistance
Read poet, Martin Espada‘s ruminations on the embattled Williams in his later years, in his poem, “Insult” – here
“May 1953: The poet glanced at the white sheet in the typewriter, the blank/ calendar on the wall, nowhere but ice to plant his feet, nowhere but ice to fall/. He struck the keys left-handed, one finger at a time, cursing all the typos/ and the strikethroughs….”
Here’s (a section of) Allen’s class at Naropa on Williams from 1976: