THE MAN BORN TO FARMING SLEEP
The grower of trees, the
gardener, the man born to farming, I love to lie down weary
whose hands reach into the
ground and sprout, under the stalk of sleep
to him the soil is a divine
drug. He enters into death growing slowly out of
yearly, and comes back
rejoicing. He has seen the light lie
down my head,
in the dung heap, and rise
again in the corn. the dark leaves meshing.
His thought passes along
the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he
swallowed
that the unending sentence
of his love flows out of his mouth
like a vine clinging in the
sunlight, and like water
descending in the dark?
THE STONES TO
KNOW THE DARK
I owned a slope full of
stones. To
go in the dark with a light
Like buried pianos they lay
in the ground, is
to know the light.
shards of old sea-ledges,
stumbling blocks To
know the dark, go dark.
where the earth caught and
kept them Go
without sight,
dark, an old music mute in
them and
find that the dark, too,
that my head keeps now that
I have dug them out. blooms
and sings,
I broke them where they
slugged in their dark and
is traveled by dark feet
cells, and lifted them up
in pieces. and
dark wings.
As I piled them in the
light
I began their music. I heard their old lime
rouse in breath of song
that has not left me.
I gave pain and weariness
to their bearing out. FEBRUARY
2, 1968
What bond have I made with
the earth, In
the darkness of the moon, in
having worn myself against
it? It is a fatal singing flying snow, in the dead
I have carried with me out
of the day. of
winter,
The stones have given me
the music war
spreading, families dying, the
that figures for me their
holes in the earth world
in danger,
and their long lying in
them dark. I
walk the rocky hillside, sowing
They have taught me the
weariness that loves the ground, clover.
and I must prepare a
fitting silence.
WINTER NIGHT POEM FOR MARY THE SEEDS
As I started home after
dark The
seeds begin abstract as their
I looked into the sky and
saw the new moon, species,
an old man with a basket on
his arm. remote
as the name on the sack
He walked among the cedars
in the bare woods. they are
carried home in: Fayette
They stood like guardians,
dark Seed
Company
as he passed. He might have been singing, Corner of Vine and
Rose. But
or he might not. He might have been sowing the sower
the spring flowers, or he
might not. But I saw him going forth to sow sets foot
with his basket, going
along the hilltop. into
time to come, the seeds falling
on
his own place. He has prepared a way
for
his life to come to him, if it will.
Like
a tree, he has given roots
to
the earth, and stands free.
Farming: A Handbook Poems by
Wendell Berry New York: Harcourt Brace,
1970.