Free New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry

me.
    Waking in the early mornings,
    I could hear it, like a bird
    bemused among the leaves,
    a mockingbird idly singing
    in the autumn of catastrophe:
    â€œBe ready. Be ready.
    Harden yourself. Harden yourself.”
    And I heard the sound
    of a great engine pounding
    in the air, and a voice asking:
    â€œChange or slavery?
    Hardship or slavery?”
    and voices answering:
    â€œSlavery! Slavery!”
    And I was afraid, loving
    what I knew would be lost.
    Then the voice following me said:
    â€œYou have not yet come close enough.
    Come nearer the ground. Learn
    from the woodcock in the woods
    whose feathering is a ritual
    of the fallen leaves,
    and from the nesting quail
    whose speckling makes her hard to see
    in the long grass.
    Study the coat of the mole.
    For the farmer shall wear
    the furrows and the greenery
    of his fields, and bear
    the long standing of the woods.”
    And I asked: “You mean death, then?”
    â€œYes,” the voice said. “Die
    into what the earth requires of you.”
    I let go all holds then, and sank
    like a hopeless swimmer into the earth,
    and at last came fully into the ease
    and the joy of that place,
    all my lost ones returning.
    9/28/68

THE CURRENT
    Having once put his hand into the ground,
    seeding there what he hopes will outlast him,
    a man has made a marriage with his place,
    and if he leaves it his flesh will ache to go back.
    His hand has given up its birdlife in the air.
    It has reached into the dark like a root
    and begun to wake, quick and mortal, in timelessness,
    a flickering sap coursing upward into his head
    so that he sees the old tribespeople bend
    in the sun, digging with sticks, the forest opening
    to receive their hills of corn, squash, and beans,
    their lodges and graves, and closing again.
    He is made their descendant, what they left
    in the earth rising into him like a seasonal juice.
    And he sees the bearers of his own blood arriving,
    the forest burrowing into the earth as they come,
    their hands gathering the stones up into walls,
    and relaxing, the stones crawling back into the ground
    to lie still under the black wheels of machines.
    The current flowing to him through the earth
    flows past him, and he sees one descended from him,
    a young man who has reached into the ground,
    his hand held in the dark as by a hand.

THE MAD FARMER REVOLUTION
    being a fragment
    of the natural history of New Eden,
    in homage
    to Mr. Ed McClanahan, one of the locals
    The mad farmer, the thirsty one,
    went dry. When he had time
    he threw a visionary high
    lonesome on the holy communion wine.
    â€œIt is an awesome event
    when an earthen man has drunk
    his fill of the blood of a god,”
    people said, and got out of his way.
    He plowed the churchyard, the
    minister’s wife, three graveyards
    and a golf course. In a parking lot
    he planted a forest of little pines.
    He sanctified the groves,
    dancing at night in the oak shades
    with goddesses. He led
    a field of corn to creep up
    and tassel like an Indian tribe
    on the courthouse lawn. Pumpkins
    ran out to the ends of their vines
    to follow him. Ripe plums
    and peaches reached into his pockets.
    Flowers sprang up in his tracks
    everywhere he stepped. And then
    his planter’s eye fell on
    that parson’s fair fine lady
    again. “O holy plowman,” cried she,
    â€œI am all grown up in weeds.
    Pray, bring me back into good tilth.”
    He tilled her carefully
    and laid her by, and she
    did bring forth others of her kind,
    and others, and some more.
    They sowed and reaped till all
    the countryside was filled
    with farmers and their brides sowing
    and reaping. When they died
    they became two spirits of the woods.

THE CONTRARINESS OF THE MAD FARMER
    I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
    inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
    to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
    I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
    and tilled somewhat by incantation