A Reading by Wendell Berry

In honor of a recent Groom from Kentucky, I offered the following reading by the famed Blue Grass state writer and activist Wendell Berry:

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. 
We opena persimmon seed 
to find the treethat stands in promise,

pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

The Dance

I would have each couple turn,
join and unjoin, be lost
in the greater turning
of other couples, woven
in the circle of a dance,
the song of long time flowing.

over them, so they may return,
turn again in to themselves
out of desire greater than their own,
belonging to all, to each
to the dance, and to the song,
that moves them through the night.

What is fidelity?  To what
does it hold The point
of departure, or the turning road
that is departure and absence
and the way home?  What we are
and what we were once

are far estranged.  For those
who would not change, time
is infidelity.  But we are married
until death, and are betrothed
to change.  By silence, so,
I learn my song.  I earn

my sunny fields by absence, once
and to come.  And I love you
as I love the dance that brings you
out of the multitude
in which you come and go.
love changes, and in change is true.

  --Wendell Berry

From “The Country of Marriage”

…our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers...
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in…

--Wendell Berry