New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry

necessary,
    some in the wrong direction.
    Practice resurrection.

A MARRIAGE, AN ELEGY
    They lived long, and were faithful
    to the good in each other.
    They suffered as their faith required.
    Now their union is consummate
    in earth, and the earth
    is their communion. They enter
    the serene gravity of the rain,
    the hill’s passage to the sea.
    After long striving, perfect ease.

THE ARRIVAL
    Like a tide it comes in,
    wave after wave of foliage and fruit,
    the nurtured and the wild,
    out of the light to this shore.
    In its extravagance we shape
    the strenuous outline of enough.

A SONG SPARROW SINGING IN THE FALL
    Somehow it has all
    added up to song—
    earth, air, rain and light,
    the labor and the heat,
    the mortality of the young.
    I will go free of other
    singing, I will go
    into the silence
    of my songs, to hear
    this song clearly.

THE MAD FARMER MANIFESTO: THE FIRST AMENDMENT
1.
    â€œ. . . it is not too soon to provide by every
    possible means that as few as possible shall be
    without a little portion of land. The small
    landholders are the most precious part of a state.”
    Jefferson, to Reverend James Madison, October 28, 1785.
    That is the glimmering vein
    of our sanity, dividing from us
    from the start: land under us
    to steady us when we stood,
    free men in the great communion
    of the free. The vision keeps
    lighting in my mind, a window
    on the horizon in the dark.
2.
    To be sane in a mad time
    is bad for the brain, worse
    for the heart. The world
    is a holy vision, had we clarity
    to see it—a clarity that men
    depend on men to make.
3.
    It is ignorant money I declare
    myself free from, money fat
    and dreaming in its sums, driving
    us into the streets of absence,
    stranding the pasture trees
    in the deserted language of banks.
4.
    And I declare myself free
    from ignorant love. You easy lovers
    and forgivers of mankind, stand back!
    I will love you at a distance,
    and not because you deserve it.
    My love must be discriminate
    or fail to bear its weight.

PLANTING TREES
    In the mating of trees,
    the pollen grain entering invisible
    the domed room of the winds, survives
    the ghost of the old forest
    that stood here when we came. The ground
    invites it, and it will not be gone.
    I become the familiar of that ghost
    and its ally, carrying in a bucket
    twenty trees smaller than weeds,
    and I plant them along the way
    of the departure of the ancient host.
    I return to the ground its original music.
    It will rise out of the horizon
    of the grass, and over the heads
    of the weeds, and it will rise over
    the horizon of men’s heads. As I age
    in the world it will rise and spread,
    and be for this place horizon
    and orison, the voice of its winds.
    I have made myself a dream to dream
    of its rising, that has gentled my nights.
    Let me desire and wish well the life
    these trees may live when I
    no longer rise in the mornings
    to be pleased by the green of them
    shining, and their shadows on the ground,
    and the sound of the wind in them.

THE WILD GEESE
    Horseback on Sunday morning,
    harvest over, we taste persimmon
    and wild grape, sharp sweet
    of summer’s end. In time’s maze
    over the fall fields, we name names
    that went west from here, names
    that rest on graves. We open
    a persimmon seed to find the tree
    that 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 SILENCE
    Though the air is full of singing
    my head is loud
    with the labor of words.
    Though the season is rich
    with fruit, my tongue
    hungers for the sweet of speech.
    Though the beech is golden
    I cannot stand beside it
    mute, but must say
    â€œIt is golden,” while the leaves
    stir and fall with a sound
    that is not a name.
    It is in the