REFLECTION: Making sense of happiness and loss
Willow Island Cemetery, Willow Island, W.Va. — Photo by Vic Burkhammer
On West Virginia Public Broadcasting today, in another touching rumination, W.Va. Poet Laureate Irene McKinney talked about happiness and its close relationship to compassion.
It seems apt now particularly as I am in Day 4 without my Aunt Earlene, my mother’s only sister, who died in an Indiana hospice care house early Saturday morning. Her obituary mentioned that she liked to “help people.” What could be better than that, for a woman who had her large share of difficulties. Helping was her refuge.
Each time there is a funeral of one so close to me, I start sorting out poems with a new energy. Always I realize how little of what is written reaches as far as it needs really needs to. Thanks, Irene McKinney, for your reflective essays. Now, I’m off to pull my spirit all the way back to the little W.Va. town of St. Marys where Earlene has been brought back to be buried in the cemetery where many of my relatives rest.
As for my poem, I can feel it coming on, and I will work to make it just right.
Sometimes over the years, I’ve pulled a William Carlos William poem called “Tract” to read, and it seems to hold up over the decades. I think it’s in the public domain now.
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
how well he is housed or 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 wreaths 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.
– William Carlos Williams
