Another person whose life touched mine is gone. Wendell Berry, the writer and poet whose thoughtfulness, insights and words mattered and made a difference for good, died on Monday at his home on a farm in Kentucky. He was 92 years old. I didn’t have to agree with everything he said, to consider and appreciate the light, love and wonderment he shared and invited through the poetry and ponderings I encountered online and in the books on my shelf.
According to his daughter, Mary Berry, “He was unfailingly gentlemanly and kind. He said the things we needed to hear, and some things that we all ought to live by, and one is that it will never be so bad that we can’t do the right thing that’s right in front of us to do”.
To his readers, however, Wendell issued the following warning:
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any
gross of speech, intolerant
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times is not natural
A wonder is what it is.
On wonder, the following from him expresses the feeling that comes over me each year in the season of warmth when the fireflies are twinkling in the woods and my four foot tall garden lilies are blooming and scenting air that previously smelled of snow and frost.
The woods and pastures are joyous
in their abundance now
in a season of warmth and much rain
we walk amidst foliage, amidst
song. The sheep and cattle graze
like souls in bliss (except for flies)
and lie down satisfied. Who now
can believe in winter? In winter
who could have hoped for this?
His most often quoted poem, The Peace of Wild Things can be found here. And from his prose, as recorded at The Marginalian:
