Thursday, July 13, 2006

The peace of wild things

I had the good fortune to discover the American writer Wendell Berry in the late 1980s. He is indeed a wise man in this troubled age. His poems, essays, and works of fiction have won him numerous honours and a wide following. He lives and farms in his native Kentucky.

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."

Henry David Thoreau

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

2 comments:

Bonita said...

Wonderful! There is peace in still water, and powerful memory. I wish this kind of peace on everything.

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