Americans are a practical, do-it-yourself people. Their homes are filled with various books on How to Do X , How to Do Y, etc. This session considers a pair of poems in which instruction is offered to the reader.
Lucille Lang Day's poem "Instructions for a Wampanoag Clambake" describes a modern-day Native American ceremony of the Wampanoag tribes in southeastern Massachusetts. One gathers tide-smoothed stones for a cooking hole, plus clams and rockweed. Once the fire is started over the stones, more ingredients are added.
By following the instructions step by step, the participants will become receptive to those aspects of existence which are blessings:
The deer will always make you laugh
the mountain lion take your side,
the Star People shine on your path
if you do it this way.
This poem is an invitation to the members of the tribe as well as to the reader who is an outsider to this community.
In the William Carlos Williams poem Tract, the ceremony is a funeral. While the poem is also a set of instructions, it stands in contrast to the Lucille Lang Day poem by being a warning and an admonishment to his townspeople: for heaven sakes, do it right—don't screw it up.
Yet the speaker's voice is tender towards his audience. Note the opening lines:
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.
Now for some warnings:
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 . . .
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! . . .
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?
As Williams says, Dignity is the name of the game.
And finally, the send-off. Like Lucille Lang Day, Williams now feels the participants are fully prepared to carry out (and thereby to experience) the essential qualities of the ceremony at hand:
Go now
I think you are ready.
* * * * *
Instructions for a Wampanoag Clambake (Lucille Lang Day)
Wade
into Popponesset Bay
to
collect some Rock People—old round stones
smoothed by the tide.
Remember
Moshup, the giant
who
predicted the arrival of white men.When he said good-bye
to the People of the First Light,
he
turned into a whale.
Find
a place in forest shade,make a circle, and dig
a shallow round hole for the stones.
Moshup’s friend, the giant frog,
came to the cliffs and wept.
Changed into a rock, he still sits
at Gay Head today and looks out to sea.
Before
finding dry wood for the fire—
your
gift from the forest—notice the shape of the hole
and the stones: All life is a circle.
When the tide is low, gather
quahog and sickissuog clams
and plenty of rockweed,
whose stipes are loaded with brine.
Light a fire over the stones
and when the Rock People start to glow,
pile rockweed on them.
This is their blanket.
As
saltwater is released
from
the stipes and steam rises, add clams, lobsters, corn,
more armfuls of rockweed.
This
is the apponaug: seafood cooking.
Now
thank Kehtannit, who saw the frog’s sorrow and turned
him into a rock out of pity
and taught the People to use
the Earth, plants, animals
and water to care for themselves
after Moshup left.
The deer will always make you laugh
the mountain lion take your side,
the Star People shine on your path
if you do it this way.
(used by permssion of the author, to appear in The Tower Journal in late September 2012)
* * * * *
Tract (William Carlos Williams)
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.
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.
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.
(from William
Carlos Williams: Selected Poems (1985),
New York, NY: New Directions, pages 19-20)
No comments:
Post a Comment