"The Catholic Bells"
by William Carlos Williams In honor of my friend, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. August 24, 1918 – December 12, 2008 Tho' I'm no Catholic I listen hard when the bells in the yellow-brick tower of their new church ring down the leaves ring in the frost upon them and the death of the flowers ring out the grackle toward the south, the sky darkened by them, ring in the new baby of Mr. and Mrs. Krantz which cannot for the fat of its cheeks open well its eyes, ring out the parrot under its hood jealous of the child ring in Sunday morning and old age which adds as it takes away. Let them ring only ring! over the oil painting of a young priest on the church wall advertising last week's Novena to St. Anthony, ring for the lame young man in black with gaunt cheeks and wearing a Derby hat, who is hurrying to 11 o'clock Mass (the grapes still hanging to the vines along the nearby Concordia Halle like broken teeth in the head of an old...