Wendell Berry
For The Future
Planting trees early in spring, We make a place for birds to sing In time to come. How do we know? They are singing here now. There is no other guarantee That singing will
Woods
I part the out thrusting branches And come in beneath The blessed and the blessing trees. Though I am silent There is singing around me. Though I am dark There is vision around me.
The peace of wild things
When despair grows in me And I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie
What We Need Is Here
Geese appear high over us, Pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, As in love or sleep, holds Them to their way, clear In the ancient faith: what we need Is here. And we pray,
The Country Of Marriage
I. I dream of you walking at night along the streams Of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs Of birds opening around you as you walk. You are holding in
The Silence
Though the air is full of singing My head is loud With the labor of words. Though the season is rich With fruit, my tongue Hungers for the sweet of speech. Though the beech
Like The Water
Like the water Of a deep stream, Love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst, We cannot have it all, Or want it all. In its
1991-I
The year begins with war. Our bombs fall day and night, Hour after hour, by death Abroad appeasing wrath, Folly, and greed at home. Upon our giddy tower We’d oversway the world. Our hate
A Meeting
In a dream I meet My dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, And yet he is the same For the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I
In this World
The hill pasture, an open place among the trees, Tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses Are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill Dark floodwater moves down the river. The
The Lilies
Amid the gray trunks of ancient trees we found The gay woodland lilies nodding on their stems, Frail and fair, so delicately balanced the air Held or moved them as it stood or moved.
Water
I was born in a drouth year. That summer My mother waited in the house, enclosed In the sun and the dry ceaseless wind, For the men to come back in the evenings, Bringing
1991-II
The ewes crowd to the mangers; Their bellies widen, sag; Their udders tighten. Soon The little voices cry In morning cold. Soon now The garden must be worked, Laid off in rows, the seed
The Wish to be Generous
ALL that I serve will die, all my delights, The flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field, The silent lilies standing in the woods, The woods, the hill, the whole earth, all Will
Testament
1. Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath Grows large and free in air, don’t call it death A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire His surly art of imitating life; conspire
A Warning To My Readers
Do not think me gentle Because I speak in praise Of gentleness, or elegant Because I honor the grace That keeps this world. I am A man crude as any, Gross of speech, intolerant,
Ripening
The longer we are together The larger death grows around us. How many we know by now Who are dead! We, who were young, Now count the cost of having been. And yet as
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, Vacation with pay. Want more Of everything ready-made. Be afraid To know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not
Do not be ashamed
You will be walking some night In the comfortable dark of your yard And suddenly a great light will shine Round about you, and behind you Will be a wall you never saw before.
In A Motel Parking Lot, Thinking Of Dr. Williams
I. The poem is important, but Not more than the people Whose survival it serves, One of the necessities, so they may Speak what is true, and have The patience for beauty: the weighted
Sabbaths 2001
I He wakes in darkness. All around Are sounds of stones shifting, locks Unlocking. As if some one had lifted Away a great weight, light Falls on him. He has been asleep or simply
The Man Born to Farming
The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming, Whose hands reach into the ground and sprout To him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death Yearly, and comes
The Real Work
It may be that when we no longer know what to do We have come our real work, And that when we no longer know which way to go We have come to our