Category Archives: poetry

Put your ear close.

culture, humanity, poetry, , ,

I didn’t learn until recently that “Practice resurrection” has become a sort of slogan. The phrase has worked itself into many sermons since Wendell Berry closed his “Manifesto” poem with the words, and it’s also the title of a 2010 book by Eugene Peterson. The only place I’ve personally read or heard it is in this poem. This post has been in my drafts folder for several months, since before Wendell Berry died. It is a wonderful expression of the fervor of his love that called out and pushed back against the wasting of communities, and of souls.

But it was only recently that I came across a lecture by Gracy Olmstead, about Wendell’s wife Tanya and her own artistic sensibilities that contributed so much to their life together, their home and their farm. The lecture was given in 2025 but only recently put up on the Berry Center site. Gracy published the text of her talk on her Substack: “Tanya Berry’s Work and Wisdom.” I strongly urge you to click on the link if only to see a photo of Tanya very elegantly feeding pigs; I found the whole thing very thought-provoking. Farming is for Tanya a way to practice her art.

One odd thing I discovered in my research when I was first drafting this post was a Christian minister who thought that for his Easter sermon in 2024 he had invented the word “resurrectional.” Berry published this poem in the 1973 edition of his collection, The Country of Marriage.

MANIFESTO: THE MAD FARMER LIBERATION FRONT

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

-Wendell Berry

 

Musings on war and death.

death, poetry,

AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES HIS DEATH

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

-W.B. Yeats

Kiltartan Castle

 

The Moon and the Sea.

love, poetry, , , ,
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Last week I happened to be sitting at the computer when my friend Rosemary sent me a beautiful photo of the copper-colored moon. It was a picture her son had just then taken in Idaho, with the aid of a telescope, of the partial eclipse. I had not known about the eclipse until that moment, so I headed out the front door to see what I could see. I think there was a little cloud cover — or maybe it was just the distance making the image a bit foggy. In any case I could definitely see that the moon was leaving the umbra. That was fun!

This poem is about more common lunar events, and their effect on the ocean. It is one that has been waiting in my drafts folder for some time; after my viewing of that “relationship drama” in the sky, it seems a good time to publish it. I want to make some further comment, because the poem moves me so deeply. But — it seems that’s all I can tell you. It is a whole and complete thing, in every way.

A SONNET OF THE MOON

Look how the pale Queen of the silent night
Doth cause the Ocean to attend upon her,
And he, as long as she is in his sight,
With his full tide is ready her to honor.

But when the silver waggon of the Moon
Is mounted up so high he cannot follow,
The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan,
And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.

So you that are the sovereign of my heart
Have all my joys attending on your will,
My joys low-ebbing when you do depart,
When you return their tide my heart doth fill.

So as you come, and as you do depart,
Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.

-Charles Best

Winslow Homer, Moonlight

 

 

To disappear, and yet remain.

poetry,

Wendell Berry has completed the giving away of himself. Memory eternal.

No, no there is no going back.gl Mortar Rock bay tree
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

– Wendell Berry, August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026

From A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997