Free New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry Page A

and by singing,
    and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor,
    in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
    so often laughing at funerals, that was because
    I knew the dead were already slipping away,
    preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
    And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
    my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
    had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
    be resurrected by a piece of cake. “Dance,” they told me,
    and I stood still, and while they stood
    quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
    â€œPray,” they said, and I laughed, covering myself
    in the earth’s brightnesses, and then stole off gray
    into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
    When they said, “I know that my Redeemer liveth,”
    I told them, “He’s dead.” And when they told me,
    â€œGod is dead,” I answered, “He goes fishing every day
    in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.”
    When they asked me would I like to contribute
    I said no, and when they had collected
    more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
    When they asked me to join them I wouldn’t,
    and then went off by myself and did more
    than they would have asked. “Well, then,” they said,
    â€œgo and organize the International Brotherhood
    of Contraries,” and I said, “Did you finish killing
    everybody who was against peace?” So be it.
    Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
    thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
    I say I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest
    way to come to the truth. It is one way.

THE FARMER AND THE SEA
    The sea always arriving,
    hissing in pebbles, is breaking
    its edge where the landsman
    squats on his rock. The dark
    of the earth is familiar to him,
    close mystery of his source
    and end, always flowering
    in the light and always
    fading. But the dark of the sea
    is perfect and strange,
    the absence of any place,
    immensity on the loose.
    Still, he sees it is another
    keeper of the land, caretaker,
    shaking the earth, breaking it,
    clicking the pieces, but somewhere
    holding deep fields yet to rise,
    shedding its richness on them
    silently as snow, keeper and maker
    of places wholly dark. And in him
    something dark applauds.

EARTH AND FIRE
    In this woman the earth speaks.
    Her words open in me, cells of light
    flashing in my body, and make a song
    that I follow toward her out of my need.
    The pain I have given her I wear
    like another skin, tender, the air
    around me flashing with thorns.
    And yet such joy as I have given her
    sings in me and is part of her song.
    The winds of her knees shake me
    like a flame. I have risen up from her,
    time and again, a new man.

THE MAD FARMER IN THE CITY
    â€œ. . . a field woman is a portion
    of the field; she has somehow lost
    her own margin . . .” THOMAS HARDY
    As my first blow against it, I would not stay.
    As my second, I learned to live without it.
    As my third, I went back one day and saw
    that my departure had left a little hole
    where some of its strength was flowing out,
    and I heard the earth singing beneath the street.
    Singing quietly myself, I followed the song
    among the traffic. Everywhere I went, singing,
    following the song, the stones cracked,
    and I heard it stronger. I heard it strongest
    in the presence of women. There was one I met
    who had the music of the ground in her, and she
    was its dancer. “O Exile,” I sang, “for want of you
    there is a tree that has borne no leaves
    and a planting season that will not turn warm.”
    Looking at her, I felt a tightening of roots
    under the pavement, and I turned and went
    with her a little way, dancing beside her.
    And I saw a black woman still inhabiting
    as in a dream the space of the open fields
    where she had bent to plant and gather. She stood
    rooted in the music I heard, pliant and proud
    as a stalk of wheat with the grain heavy. No