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4 poems by Wendell Berry from Sabbaths,
North Point Press, San Francisco CA; © 1987
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1979 – I
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I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
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Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
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Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
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After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing
the day turns, the trees move.
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❀ ❀ ❀
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1979 – VII
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What if, in the high restful sanctuary
That keeps the memory of Paradise,
We’re followed by the drone of history
And greed’s poisonous fumes still burn our eyes?
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Disharmony recalls us to our work.
From Heavenly work of light and wind and leaf
We must turn back into the peopled dark
Of our unraveling century, the grief
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Of waste, the agony of haste and noise.
It is a hard return from Sabbath rest
To lifework of the fields, yet we rejoice,
Returning, less condemned in being blessed
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By vision of what human work can make:
A harmony between wood-land and field,
The world as it was given for love’s sake,
The world by love and loving work revealed
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As given to our children and our Maker.
In that healed harmony the world is used
But not destroyed, the Giver and the taker
Joined, the taker blessed, in the unabused
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Gift that nurtures and protects. Then workday
and Sabbath live together in one place.
Though mortal, incomplete, that harmony
is our one possibility of peace.
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When field and woods agree, they make a rhyme
That stirs in distant memory the whole
First Sabbath’s song that no largess of time
Or hope or sorrow wholly can recall.
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But harmony of earth is Heaven-made,
Heaven-making, is promise and is prayer,
A little song to keep us unafraid,
An earthly music magnified in air.
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❀ ❀ ❀
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1981
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Here where the world is being made,
No human hand required,
A man may come, somewhat afraid
Always, and somewhat tired,
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For he comes ignorant and alone
From work and worry of
A human place, in soul and bone
The ache of human love;
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He may come and be still, not go
Toward any chosen aim
Or stay for what he thinks is so.
Setting aside his claim
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On all things fallen in his plight,
His mind may move with leaves,
Wind-shaken, in and out of light,
And live as the light lives,
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And live as the Creation sings
In covert, two clear notes,
And waits; then two clear answerings
Come from more distant throats—
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May live a while with light, shaking
In high leaves, or delayed
In halts of song, submit to making,
The shape of what is made.
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❀ ❀ ❀
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1980 – IV
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The frog with lichened back and golden thigh
Sits still, almost invisible
On leafed and lichened stem,
Invisibility
Its sign of being at home
There in its given place, and well.
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The warbler with its quivering striped throat
Would live almost beyond my sight,
Almost beyond belief,
But for its double note—
Among high leaves a leaf,
At ease, at home in air and light.
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And I, through woods and fields, through fallen days
Am passing to where I belong:
At home, at ease, and well,
In Sabbaths of this place
Almost invisible,
Toward which I go from song to song.
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❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀
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When field and woods agree, they make a rhyme . . .
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Wendell Berry, (August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026) was a Kentucky farmer on land his great-great-grandfather bought after the war of 1812. And he was a poet, novelist, essayist, advocate, activist, and environmentalist, whose many award include the 2010 National Humanities Medal awarded by President Barak Obama. Place is a character in all that Wendell Berry has written. The land is his anchor. The contrast of field and woods, man-tilled earth versus wild spaces, is a constant theme, and not in the sense of conflict or incompatibility but with the admonition that field and wood must converge in our reverence and in our stewardship. We must care for our planet or perish. He listened and heard the song of Creation. He opens our ears, our eyes, our souls to know that song as well.
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❀
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Wendell Erdman Berry obituary at the Kentucky Lantern:
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Wendell Berry biography and letters at The Poetry Foundation:
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Mountains-to-Sea Trail, Surry County NC
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