Favorite Wendell Berry Poems...

Of late, I have been doing far more reading than writing. Although I confess, that I've written more than I've shared and perhaps you will read it soon. But until then, I thought I'd share a few of Wendell Berry's poems that have moved me lately...

Drouth

All day the crops burn in cloudless air,
Drouth lengthening against belief. At night
The husbands and the wives lie side by side,
Awake, the ache of panic in their bones,
Their purposes betrayed by purposes
Unknown, whose mystery is the dark in which
They wait and grieve. All may be lost, and then
What will they do? When money is required
Of them, and they have none, where will they go?

Many will go in blame against the world,
Hating it for their pain, and they will go
Alone across the dry, bright, lifeless days,
And thus alone into the dark. Others
In grief and loss will see more certainly
What they have loved, and will belong to it
And to each other as in happiness
They never did-- hearing, though the whole world
Go dry, the hidden raincrow of their hope.


For an Absence

When I cannot be with you
I will send my love (so much
is allowed to human lovers)
to watch over you in the dark--
a winged small presence
who never sleeps, however long
the night. Perhaps it cannot
protect or help, I do not know,
but it watches always, and so
you will sleep within my love
within the room within the dark.
And when, restless, you wake
and see the room palely lit
by that watching, you will think,
"It is only dawn," and go
quiet to sleep again.


The Blue Robe

(note: This is how I (Will) would one day like to to look upon my beloved)

How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know

each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake

at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!


That's all for now. I hope these move you to read Wendell Berry in any context. I cannot promise that he will move you, but he has moved me, and helped my soul understand how to heal.