Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

~ Wendell Berry

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

~ Wendell Berry

How To Be a Poet

Image: nuchylee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill — more of each

than you have — inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your work,

doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

There are only sacred places

And desecrated places.

~ Wendell Berry

How To Be a Poet

Image: nuchylee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill — more of each

than you have — inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your work,

doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

There are only sacred places

And desecrated places.

~ Wendell Berry

The Lemon Trees

Photo credit: lisasolonynko from morguefile.com

Hear me a moment. Laureate poets 

seem to wander among plants

no one knows: boxwood, acanthus,

where nothing is alive to touch.

I prefer small streets that falter

into grassy ditches where a boy,

searching in the sinking puddles,

might capture a struggling eel.

The little path that winds down

along the slope plunges through cane-tufts

and opens suddenly into the orchard

among the moss-green trunks

of the lemon trees.

Perhaps it is better

if the jubilee of small birds

dies down, swallowed in the sky,

yet more real to one who listens,

the murmur of tender leaves

in a breathless, unmoving air.

The senses are graced with an odor

filled with the earth.

It is like rain in a troubled breast,

sweet as an air that arrives

too suddenly and vanishes.

A miracle is hushed; all passions

are swept aside. Even the poor

know that richness,

the fragrance of the lemon trees.

You realize that in silences

things yield and almost betray

their ultimate secrets.

At times, one half expects

to discover an error in Nature,

the still point of reality,

the missing link that will not hold,

the thread we cannot untangle

in order to get at the truth.

You look around. Your mind seeks,

makes harmonies, falls apart

in the perfume, expands

when the day wearies away.

There are silences in which one watches

in every fading human shadow

something divine let go.

The illusion wanes, and in time we return

to our noisy cities where the blue

appears only in fragments

high up among the towering shapes.

Then rain leaching the earth.

Tedious, winter burdens the roofs,

and light is a miser, the soul bitter.

Yet, one day through an open gate,

among the green luxuriance of a yard,

the yellow lemons fire

and the heart melts,

and golden songs pour

into the breast

from the raised cornets of the sun.

~ Eugenio Montale

translated by Lee Gerlach

___________________________________________

I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup. ~ Wendell Berry

The Lemon Trees

Photo credit: lisasolonynko from morguefile.com

Hear me a moment. Laureate poets 

seem to wander among plants

no one knows: boxwood, acanthus,

where nothing is alive to touch.

I prefer small streets that falter

into grassy ditches where a boy,

searching in the sinking puddles,

might capture a struggling eel.

The little path that winds down

along the slope plunges through cane-tufts

and opens suddenly into the orchard

among the moss-green trunks

of the lemon trees.

Perhaps it is better

if the jubilee of small birds

dies down, swallowed in the sky,

yet more real to one who listens,

the murmur of tender leaves

in a breathless, unmoving air.

The senses are graced with an odor

filled with the earth.

It is like rain in a troubled breast,

sweet as an air that arrives

too suddenly and vanishes.

A miracle is hushed; all passions

are swept aside. Even the poor

know that richness,

the fragrance of the lemon trees.

You realize that in silences

things yield and almost betray

their ultimate secrets.

At times, one half expects

to discover an error in Nature,

the still point of reality,

the missing link that will not hold,

the thread we cannot untangle

in order to get at the truth.

You look around. Your mind seeks,

makes harmonies, falls apart

in the perfume, expands

when the day wearies away.

There are silences in which one watches

in every fading human shadow

something divine let go.

The illusion wanes, and in time we return

to our noisy cities where the blue

appears only in fragments

high up among the towering shapes.

Then rain leaching the earth.

Tedious, winter burdens the roofs,

and light is a miser, the soul bitter.

Yet, one day through an open gate,

among the green luxuriance of a yard,

the yellow lemons fire

and the heart melts,

and golden songs pour

into the breast

from the raised cornets of the sun.

~ Eugenio Montale

translated by Lee Gerlach

___________________________________________

I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup. ~ Wendell Berry

Do not be ashamed

You will be walking some night

in the comfortable dark of your yard

and suddenly a great light will shine

round about you, and behind you

will be a wall you never saw before.

It will be clear to you suddenly

that you were about to escape,

and that you are guilty: you misread

the complex instructions, you are not

a member, you lost your card

or never had one. And you will know

that they have been there all along,

their eyes on your letters and books,

their hands in your pockets,

their ears wired to your bed.

Though you have done nothing shameful,

they will want you to be ashamed.

They will want you to kneel and weep

and say you should have been like them.

And once you say you are ashamed,

reading the page they hold out to you,

then such light as you have made

in your history will leave you.

They will no longer need to pursue you.

You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.

They will not forgive you.

There is no power against them.

It is only candor that is aloof from them,

only an inward clarity, unashamed,

that they cannot reach. Be ready.

When their light has picked you out

and their questions are asked, say to them:

"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon

will come around you. The heron will begin

his evening flight from the hilltop.

~ Wendell Berry

_____________________________________________

Shame occurs when you haven't been able to get away with the 'who' you want people to think you are. ~ Carl Whitaker

Do not be ashamed

You will be walking some night

in the comfortable dark of your yard

and suddenly a great light will shine

round about you, and behind you

will be a wall you never saw before.

It will be clear to you suddenly

that you were about to escape,

and that you are guilty: you misread

the complex instructions, you are not

a member, you lost your card

or never had one. And you will know

that they have been there all along,

their eyes on your letters and books,

their hands in your pockets,

their ears wired to your bed.

Though you have done nothing shameful,

they will want you to be ashamed.

They will want you to kneel and weep

and say you should have been like them.

And once you say you are ashamed,

reading the page they hold out to you,

then such light as you have made

in your history will leave you.

They will no longer need to pursue you.

You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.

They will not forgive you.

There is no power against them.

It is only candor that is aloof from them,

only an inward clarity, unashamed,

that they cannot reach. Be ready.

When their light has picked you out

and their questions are asked, say to them:

"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon

will come around you. The heron will begin

his evening flight from the hilltop.

~ Wendell Berry

_____________________________________________

Shame occurs when you haven't been able to get away with the 'who' you want people to think you are. ~ Carl Whitaker

The Tree of Scarlet Berries

Source: Holly Hill Nurseries

The rain gullies the garden paths

And tinkles on the broad sides of grass blades.

A tree, at the end of my arm, is hazy with mist.

Even so, I can see that it has red berries,

A scarlet fruit,

Filmed over with moisture.

It seems as though the rain,

Dripping from it,

Should be tinged with colour.

I desire the berries,

But, in the mist, I only scratch my hand on the thorns.

Probably, too, they are bitter.

~ Amy Lowell

_________________________________________

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup. ~ Wendell Berry

The Tree of Scarlet Berries

Source: Holly Hill Nurseries

The rain gullies the garden paths

And tinkles on the broad sides of grass blades.

A tree, at the end of my arm, is hazy with mist.

Even so, I can see that it has red berries,

A scarlet fruit,

Filmed over with moisture.

It seems as though the rain,

Dripping from it,

Should be tinged with colour.

I desire the berries,

But, in the mist, I only scratch my hand on the thorns.

Probably, too, they are bitter.

~ Amy Lowell

_________________________________________

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup. ~ Wendell Berry

What We Need Is Here

 

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.

~ Wendell Berry

__________________________________

Keep high aspirations, moderate expectations, and small needs. ~ William Howard Stein

 

What We Need Is Here

 

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.

~ Wendell Berry

__________________________________

Keep high aspirations, moderate expectations, and small needs. ~ William Howard Stein