Richard Ratzan
Cell 2 Soul. 2005 Winter; 1(4):a3
For Teddy Graham and Eleanor Pyle, both teachers of William Carlos Williams.
There it was!
She said it:
What did William Carlos Williams
call it — witnessing the words being born
in their unspoiled newness?
Their secret selves exposed as he gently
strolled through their interior gardens
of interior monologue
heard from without as
though from within
the two of us (three)
counting her husband)
listening to her try to describe
in a third language —
German her first
English her second —
the semiotics of symptoms
a difficult third —
"dizziness" always a tough
sell using any tongue any metaphor
"like when you're drunk" didn't satisfy
though I knew what she meant
having spent many a college night
holding onto an uncooperative floor
"lightheaded" "spinning" "dizzy"
again all failed her until suddenly
her face lighting up with
the creativity of illness-described
she pronounced the line William
Carlos Williams and I
practice medicine for —
The Poetry Naïf of the Sick:
"The floor attracts you."