Thursday, July 16, 2009

VII by Wendell Berry

I would not have been a poet
except that I have been in love
alive in this mortal world,
or an essayist except that I
have been bewildered and afraid,
or a storyteller had I not heard
stories passing to me through the air,
or a writer at all except
I have been wakeful at night
and words have come to me
out of their deep caves
needing to be remembered.
But on the days I am lucky
or blessed, I am silent.
I go into the one body
that two make in making marriage
that for all our trying, all
our deaf-and-dumb of speech,
has no tongue. Or I give myself
to gravity, light, and air
and am carried back
to solitary work in fields
and woods, where my hands
rest upon a world unnamed,
complete, unanswerable, and final
as our daily bread and meat.
The way of love leads all ways
to life beyond words, silent
and secret. To serve that triumph
I have done all the rest.


"VII" from the poem "1994" by Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir:
The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997. © Counterpoint, 1998.

2 comments:

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Thanks for this. It's wonderful.

Maggie May said...

yes, wonderful. all true depths of love lead to silence? i think about this...