“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”
—Wendell Berry, from Given: Poems (Counterpoint, 2005)
Thank you, apoetreflects.
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.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me.
Wendell Berry, “Woods” (via litverve)
VI: Sabbaths 2001
Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.
—Wendell Berry. Read the full poem here. With thanks to litverve.
Image: Hakuyō Fukumori, title unknown, 1922. From Truth Beauty Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945, via: liquidnight.
From parabola-magazine.
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, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
–Wendell Berry, with thanks to theworkofwings.
(Source: shawnparell)
WENDELL BERRY: In this difficult time of failed public expectations, when thoughtful people wonder where to look for hope, I keep returning in my own mind to the thought of the renewal of the rural communities. I know that one revived rural community would be more convincing and more encouraging than all the government and university programs of the last fifty years, and I think that it could be the beginning of the renewal of our country, for the renewal of rural communities ultimately implies the renewal of urban ones. But to be authentic, a true encouragement and a true beginning, this would have to be a revival accomplished mainly by the community itself. It would have to be done not from the outside by the instruction of visiting experts, but from the inside by the ancient rule of neighborliness, by the love of precious things, and by the wish to be at home.
Excerpt from What Are People For? Copyright © 2010 by Wendell Berry
(Source: chasingtailfeathers)
How To Be a Poet
By WENDELL BERRY
(to remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
With thanks to silencesounds.
(Source: poetryfoundation.org)
poem in your pocket day
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 who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: “How you been?”
He grins and looks at me.
“I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees.”
–Wendell Berry, courtesy of Whiskey River & Poem in Your Pocket Day.
We are defeated at work because our work gives us no pleasure. We are defeated at home because we have no pleasant work there. We turn to the pleasure industries for relief from our defeat, and are again defeated, for the pleasure industries can thrive and grow only upon our dissatisfaction with them.
Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?
Wendell Berry, “Economy and Pleasure,” What Are People For?, page 140. (Thank you, settledthingsstrange)
It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
Wendell Berry (Thank you, buffleheadcabin & chary)
The earth is what we all have in common.
Wendell Berry. Epigraph from chapter three of The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule (via epigraphic)
