Secular Days, Sacred Moments: The America Columns of Robert Coles

September 11, 1999. William Carlos Williams treated many Catholics who said they would pray for him. He was skeptical about such promises.

106  september 11, 1999 William Carlos Williams treated many Catholics who said they would pray for him. He was skeptical about such promises. A greatprivilegeitwasformeasanundergraduate,thenamedical school student, to get to know the New Jersey poet and physician William Carlos Williams. I had written an essay about his long poem Paterson, a lyrical evocation of life as it was lived daily and variously in that city where America’s first factory was built and, arguably, where our capitalism was born; and my college professor, Perry Miller, urged me to send my effort to the one whose writing had been discussed inallthoselaboriouslytypedpages.Tomysurprise,anenvelopecameback with a note scribbled on a prescription paper. It was vintage Williams: “Not bad—if you’re ever hereabouts, drop by.” It took me time to get up the courage to do so, but I did “drop by.” I called the telephone number on the note sent me. I reached Flossie, Williams’s wife, and in time I met both of them, got to visit them again and again—a huge jolt to my mind and heart. I remember a discussion with the poet about his Paterson patients, their hopes and worries. He gave a lot of himself to those patients, and often was paid little or nothing  107 for the many house calls he made, over and over, to them, mostly in aging tenement buildings. ManyofthepeoplehetreatedwereCatholics,andoftentheythanked him for being so attentive, told him they would pray for him. He was, however, explicitly skeptical about such promises, such reported efforts, at home and in church: “I probably should politely say thank you when someonetellsmethey’reprayingalotforme,butI’llbecrankysometimes, because I’m tired (up all night with an emergency!) and besides, I think the good Lord they’re addressing, coming at him with their requests—I think he has more needy people to look after; and I don’t believe it works that way, that God up there hears all those pleas and answers them, and then goes and does what he’s been asked to do! So, I tell people what I think.” He saw a look of surprise come across my face—maybe incredulity with respect to his incredulity. I was silent, and in a moment or two he surprised me further by what he said: “I’ve had great talks with some of my patients when I tell them what I just told you—we get into religion, of course, even theology! They let me know in their own gentle and respectful way that they think I’m naive, never mind walking down the wrong road! ‘Of course, God is sitting up there with some long-distance phone, taking messages from us, and giving orders to others’—a grandmother who has only been here [in the United States] ten years or so told me last year; and I could see she was praying hard for me then and there as she spoke. She finished me off with this: ‘You pray to give your soul the words it wants to express. You pray because you believe. You pray because that’s you—to pray is to tell God you believe and you hope. God doesn’t listen with ears, you know. God is there, everywhere, I tell my grandchildren, 108  and that means he hopes you’re listening—to the people you love; and he hopes you’re remembering him when you’re listening, and when you’re asking for something to happen in your prayers: you want him to be your witness, but remember, your life is your evidence!’ “I was up against the wall when she finished—I was reeling! I wrote down what she said [he did that often after leaving his patients, and sometimes their words got worked into his writing], and I read it to Flossie later.Shesaid,‘Bill,you’re alwaystellingpeoplehowmuchyoulearnfrom your patients, from plain, ordinary, poor folks—so why the big surprise?’ Still, there was a lot to think about—and I sure had her in mind (her and others like her) when I wrote that poem ‘The Catholic Bells’!” A great compliment was thus sent to that newly arrived American by her doctor—whose poem, actually, takes up lyrically what she was trying to get at in her own unself-conscious (but not analytic and not theological) manner: God as one to be called through our human devices of thought and sound. “Tho’ I’m no Catholic . . .” Williams tells us right off. Then comes his deeply felt salute...