Poem of the Week: Wendell Berry

2008, XII 

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…

                             Hosea 4:6

We forget the land we stand on

and live from. We set ourselves

free in an economy founded

on nothing, on greed verified

by fantasy, on which we entirely

depend.  We depend on fire

that consumes the world without 

lighting it.  To this dark blaze

driving the inert metal

of our most high desire

we offer our land as fuel,

thus offering ourselves at last

to be burned. This is our riddle

to which the answer is a life

that none of us has lived.

From This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems published by Counterpoint Press. © Wendell Berry. Used by permission.

Wendell Berry is a beloved American writer, a novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer.  The author of more than 40 books, his most recent publications include: Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder (Counterpoint), 2014; This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems (Counterpoint), 2013; and A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership (Counterpoint), 2012.  He lives with his wife, Tanya Berry, on their farm in Port Royal, Kentucky. 

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