Free New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry Page B

man
    with the city thrusting angles in his brain
    is equal to her. To reach her he must tear it down.
    Wherever lovely women are the city is undone,
    its geometry broken in pieces and lifted,
    its streets and corners fading like mist at sunrise
    above groves and meadows and planted fields.

THE BIRTH (NEAR PORT WILLIAM)
    They were into the lambing, up late.
    Talking and smoking around their lantern,
    they squatted in the barn door, left open
    so the quiet of the winter night
    diminished what they said. The chill
    had begun to sink into their clothes.
    Now and then they raised their hands
    to breathe on them. The youngest one
    yawned and shivered.
    â€œDamn,” he said,
    â€œI’d like to be asleep. I’d like to be
    curled up in a warm nest like an old
    groundhog, and sleep till spring.”
    â€œWhen I was your age, Billy, it wasn’t
    sleep I thought about,” Uncle Stanley said.
    â€œLast few years here I’ve took to sleeping.”
    And Raymond said: “To sleep till spring
    you’d have to have a trust in things
    the way animals do. Been a long time,
    I reckon, since people felt safe enough
    to sleep more than a night. You might
    wake up someplace you didn’t go to sleep at.”
    They hushed a while, as if to let the dark
    brood on what they had said. Behind them
    a sheep stirred in the bedding and coughed.
    It was getting close to midnight.
    Later they would move back along the row
    of penned ewes, making sure the newborn
    lambs were well dried, and had sucked,
    and then they would go home cold to bed.
    The barn stood between the ridgetop
    and the woods along the bluff. Below
    was the valley floor and the river
    they could not see. They could hear
    the wind dragging its underside
    through the bare branches of the woods.
    And suddenly the wind began to carry
    a low singing. They looked across
    the lantern at each other’s eyes
    and saw they all had heard. They stood,
    their huge shadows rising up around them.
    The night had changed. They were already
    on their way—dry leaves underfoot
    and mud under the leaves—to another barn
    on down along the woods’ edge,
    an old stripping room, where by the light
    of the open stove door they saw the man,
    and then the woman and the child
    lying on a bed of straw on the dirt floor.
    â€œWell, look a there,” the old man said.
    â€œFirst time this ever happened here.”
    And Billy, looking, and looking away,
    said: “Howdy. Howdy. Bad night.”
    And Raymond said: “There’s a first
    time, they say, for everything.”
    And that
    he thought, was as reassuring as anything
    was likely to be, and as he needed it to be.
    They did what they could. Not much.
    They brought a piece of rug and some sacks
    to ease the hard bed a little, and one
    wedged three dollar bills into a crack
    in the wall in a noticeable place.
    And they stayed on, looking, looking away,
    until finally the man said they were well
    enough off, and should be left alone.
    They went back to their sheep. For a while
    longer they squatted by their lantern
    and talked, tired, wanting sleep, yet stirred
    by wonder—old Stanley too, though he would not
    say so.
    â€œDon’t make no difference,” he said.
    â€œThey’ll have ‘em anywhere. Looks like a man
    would have a right to be born in bed, if not
    die there, but he don’t.”
    â€œBut you heard
    that singing in the wind,” Billy said.
    â€œWhat about that?”
    â€œGhosts. They do that way.”
    â€œNot that way.”
    â€œScared him, it did.”
    The old man laughed. “We’ll have to hold
    his damn hand for him, and lead him home.”
    â€œIt don’t even bother you,” Billy said.
    â€œYou go right on just the same. But you heard.”
    â€œNow that I’m old I sleep in the dark.
    That ain’t what I used to do in it. I heard
    something.”
    â€œYou heard a good deal more
    than you’ll understand,”