Just the other day, I was racking my brain trying to remember Wendell Berry's name. I love his work. So, thank you for this synchronicity and his poem.
As a filmmaker whose eyesight recently suffered a torn retina, I'm reminded every day of the inevitable decline of my vision--but not my Vision, as this poem reminds me. The final three lines really hit home, especially the phrase, "indwelling light":
"The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality."
I gleaned the following sentence from another Wendell Berry poem that Poetic Outlaws prevoiusly published, and keep it posted right next to the pillow where I sleep:
Your perspective resonates deeply with my own. It is rare to find such clarity of thought today. I explore similar themes in my poetic archive here on Substack, and I would be honored to have a reader with your insight visit my page.
This is the kind of hope I trust: not clean, not easy, not dressed up as paradise, but rooted in the ruined soil anyway. A faith with dirt under its nails. The future singing before it has a voice. Memory becoming song. Hardship becoming light. What a devastatingly beautiful thing to believe in.
Berry always is so brave to believe there is such an animal as plain speaking. That it can be made to bunk in 18 or 24 breaths. We try to be brave, marrieds with their maths of splitting the pot, bachelors by spending all that you have got.
I like this. I remember arguing with my older brother who maintained that humanity will destroy all life on the planet. I disagreed and tried to make the point that while we might destroy us as a species and destroy a lot of life along with us, life is tenacious and will carry on until the universe itself puts a final end to it all.
Thank you for posting, a little counterpoint to Bukowski. 😎
Just the other day, I was racking my brain trying to remember Wendell Berry's name. I love his work. So, thank you for this synchronicity and his poem.
As a filmmaker whose eyesight recently suffered a torn retina, I'm reminded every day of the inevitable decline of my vision--but not my Vision, as this poem reminds me. The final three lines really hit home, especially the phrase, "indwelling light":
"The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality."
I gleaned the following sentence from another Wendell Berry poem that Poetic Outlaws prevoiusly published, and keep it posted right next to the pillow where I sleep:
"The wind will do without corners."
Please allow me to mention one book which may be inspiring:
Jacques Lusseyran "And There Was Light."
Thank you kindly.
So beautiful! So inspiring. Much needed.
Unfairly gorgeous. came for a poem, left with ancestral instructions and a sudden need to behave better near trees.
Your perspective resonates deeply with my own. It is rare to find such clarity of thought today. I explore similar themes in my poetic archive here on Substack, and I would be honored to have a reader with your insight visit my page.
Wonderful!
So rich with utter beauty. Thank you.
This is the kind of hope I trust: not clean, not easy, not dressed up as paradise, but rooted in the ruined soil anyway. A faith with dirt under its nails. The future singing before it has a voice. Memory becoming song. Hardship becoming light. What a devastatingly beautiful thing to believe in.
Berry always is so brave to believe there is such an animal as plain speaking. That it can be made to bunk in 18 or 24 breaths. We try to be brave, marrieds with their maths of splitting the pot, bachelors by spending all that you have got.
I like this. I remember arguing with my older brother who maintained that humanity will destroy all life on the planet. I disagreed and tried to make the point that while we might destroy us as a species and destroy a lot of life along with us, life is tenacious and will carry on until the universe itself puts a final end to it all.
this I read slowly, allowing time to ingest, savor, and assimilate, like a luscious rich nourishing fruit.
(also, the painting is by Winslow Homer, not Homer Winslow ;-)
I forgot the comma. People get it.
Thank you for these lines of hope in a time of hopelessness.
i like your writing