These poems are from a new collection called Sabbaths by essayist, novelist, and poet Wendell Berry.
Written over seven years of Sabbaths, the poems, like much of Berry’s work, celebrate the interdependence of all things. Berry’s love of the land is passionate, and grounded in practical necessity, for he farms the steep hillside in Henry County, Kentucky, where he lives with his wife and family. He sees the life and health of the earth as inseparable from our lives and well-being, and celebrates those connections in the psalm-like meditations that make up Sabbaths.
These are formal poems, sometimes demanding to read, but deeply spiritual, eloquent, and elegant. We’re thankful to North Point Press for permission to reprint some of them here.
— Ed.
We Have Walked So Many Times, My Boy
to Den We have walked so many times, my boy, over these old fields given up to thicket, have thought and spoken of their possibilities, theirs and ours, ours and theirs the same, so many times, that now when I walk here alone, the thought of you goes with me; my mind reaches toward yours across the distance and through time. No mortal mind’s complete within itself, but minds must speak and answer, as ours must, on the subject of this place, our history here, summoned as we are to the correction of old wrong in this soil, thinned and broken, and in our minds. You have seen on these gullied slopes the piles of stones mossy with age, dragged out of furrows long ago by men now names on stones, who cleared and broke these fields, saw them go to ruin, learned nothing from the trees they saw return to hold the ground again. But here is a clearing we have made at no cost to the world and to our gain — a re-clearing after forty years: the thicket cut level with the ground, grasses and clovers sown into the last year’s fallen leaves, new pasture coming to the sun as the woods plants, lovers of shade, give way: change made without violence to the ground. At evening birdcall flares at the woods’ edge; flight arcs into the opening before nightfall. Out of disordered history a little coherence, a pattern comes, like the steadying of a rhythm on a drum, melody coming to it from time to time, waking over it, as from a bird at dawn or nightfall, the long outline emerging through the momentary, as the hill’s hard shoulder shows through trees when the leaves fall. The field finds its source in the old forest, in the thicket that returned to cover it, in the dark wilderness of its soil, in the dispensations of the sky, in our time, in our minds — the righting of what was done wrong. Wrong was easy; gravity helped it. Right is difficult and long. In choosing what is difficult we are free, the mind too making its little flight out from the shadow into the clear in time between work and sleep. There are two healings: nature’s, and ours and nature’s. Nature’s will come in spite of us, after us, over the graves of its wasters, as it comes to the forsaken fields. The healing that is ours and nature’s will come if we are willing, if we are patient, if we know the way, if we will do the work. My father’s father, whose namesake you are, told my father this, he told me, and I am telling you: we make this healing, the land’s and ours: it is our possibility. We may keep this place, and be kept by it. There is a mind of such an artistry that grass will follow it, and heal and hold, feed beasts who will feed us and feed the soil. Though we invite, this healing comes in answer to another voice than ours; a strength not ours returns out of death beginning in our work. Though the spring is late and cold, though uproar of greed and malice shudders in the sky, pond, stream, and treetop raise their ancient songs; the robin molds her mud nest with her breast; the air is bright with breath of bloom, wise loveliness that asks nothing of the season but to be.
Life Forgives Its Depredations
Life forgives its depredations; new-shaped by loss, goes on. Luther Penn, our neighbor still in our minds, will not come down to the creek mouth to fish in April anymore. The year ripens. Leaves fall. In openings where old trees were cut down, showing the ground to the sky, snakeroot blooms white, giving shine unto the world. Ant and beetle scuttle through heroic passages, go to dust; their armor tumbles in the mold. Broad wings enter the grove, fold and are still, open and go.
How Long Does It Take To Make The Woods?
How long does it take to make the woods? As long as it takes to make the world. The woods is present as the world is, the presence of all its past, and of all its time to come. It is always finished, it is always being made, the act of its making forever greater than the act of its destruction. It is a part of eternity, for its end and beginning belong to the end and beginning of all things, the beginning lost in the end, the end in the beginning. What is the way to the woods, how do you go there? By climbing up through the six days’ field, kept in all the body’s years, the body’s sorrow, weariness, and joy. By passing through the narrow gate on the far side of that field where the pasture grass of the body’s life gives way to the high, original standing of the trees. By coming into the shadow, the shadow of the grace of the strait way’s ending, the shadow of the mercy of light. Why must the gate be narrow? Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened. To come into the woods you must leave behind the six days’ world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes. You must come without weapon or tool, alone, expecting nothing, remembering nothing, into the ease of sight, the brotherhood of eye and leaf.
Awaked From The Persistent Dream
Awaked from the persistent dream Of human chaos come again, I walk in the lamed woods, the light Brought down by felling of great trees, And in the rising thicket where The shadow of old grace returns. Leaf shadows tremble on light leaves, A lighter foliage of song Among them, the wind’s thousand tongues, And songs of birds. Beams reaching down Into the shadow swirl and swarm With gleaming traffic of the air, Bright grains of generative dust And winged intelligences. Among High maple leaves a spider’s wheel Shines, work of finest making made Touchingly in the dark. The dark Again has prayed the light to come Down into it, to animate And move it in its heaviness. So what was still and dark wakes up, Becomes intelligent, moves, names Itself by hunger and by kind, Walks, swims, flies, cries, calls, speaks, or sings. We all are praising, praying to The light we are, but cannot know.
Our Household For The Time Made Right
to Tanya Our household for the time made right, All right around us on the hill For time and for this time, tonight, Two kernels folded in one shell, We’re joined in sleep beyond desire To one another and to time, Whatever time will take or spare, Forest, field, house, and hollow room All joined to us, to darkness joined, All barriers down, and we are borne Darkly, by thoroughfares unsigned Toward light we come in time to learn, In faith no better sighted yet Than when we plighted first by hope, By vows more solemn than we thought, Ourselves to this combining sleep A quarter century ago, Lives given to each other and To time, to lives we did not know Already given, heart and hand. Would I come to this time this way Again, now that I know, confess So much, knowing I cannot say More now than then what will be? Yes. May 29, 1957 May 29, 1982
Berry’s other collections of poetry include A Part, The Wheel, and The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry 1957-1982. His novels are A Place on Earth, Nathan Coulter, and The Wild Birds. His collections of essays are The Gift of Good Land, Recollected Essays 1965-1980, Standing by Words, and Home Economics. All are available from North Point Press, Berkeley, California.
Copyright © 1987 by Wendell Berry
Reprinted by permission of North Point Press
