Be Still

Selected Works of Wendell Berry

Selected Works of Wendell Berry

Be Still

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Wendell Berry lives and farms with his family in Henry County, Kentucky, and is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Berry’s life, his farm work, his writing and teaching, his home and family, and all that each involves are extraordinarily integrated. He understands his writing as an attempt to elucidate certain connections, primarily the interrelationships and interdependencies of man and the natural world.

Berry’s premise, implicit, often explicit, in almost all of his work, is that we must have a particular place, must identify with it, must learn from it, must love it, must care for it. And only by living in this place long enough, and by attending to the knowledge of those who have lived there before us, will we fully realize the consequences of our presence there: “We may deeply affect a place we own for good or ill,” Berry has written, “but our lives are nevertheless included in its life; it will survive us, bearing the results”

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What must a man do to be at home in the world?

There must be times when he is here

as though absent, gone beyond words into the woven shadows

of the grass and the flighty darknesses

of leaves shaking in the wind, and beyond

the sense of the weariness ofengines and ofhis own heart,

his wrongs grown old unforgiven. It must be with him

as though his bones fade beyond thought

into the shadows that grow out of the ground

so that the furrow he opens in the earth opens

in his bones,

of the tongues ofthe dead tribesmen buried here

a thousand years ago. And then what presences will rise up

before him, weeds bearing flowers, and the dry wind

rain! What songs he will hear!

The Silence

and he hears the silence

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4

The ripe grassheads bend in the starlight

in the soft wind, beneath them the darkness

of the grass, fathomless, the long blades

rising out ofthe well of time. Cars

travel the valley roads below me, their lights

finding the dark, and racing on. Above

their roar is I have suddenly heard,

and felt the country turn under the stars

toward dawn. I am wholly willing to be here

between the bright silent thousands of stars

and the life ofthe grass pouring out ofthe ground.

The hill has grown to me like a foot.

Until I lift the earth I cannot move.

On the Hill Late at Night

a silence

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a silence

6

Elton stopped the truck. He turned off his

headlights and the engine,

I could hear the peepers again. It was wonderful

what the road going under the water did to that

place. It was not only that we could not go where

we were used to going; it was as if a thought that

we were used to thinking could not be thought.

“Listen!” Elton said. He had heard a barred owl off

in the woods. He quietly rolled the window down.

And then, right overhead, an owl answered:

“HOOOOOAWWW!”

And the far one said, “Hoo hoo hoohooaw!”

Excerpt from “Are You Alright?”

“Listen!” Elton said again.

The owls went through their whole repertory of

hoots and clucks and cackles and gobbles.

“Listen to them!” Elton said. “They’ve got a lot on

their minds.” Being in the woods at night excited

him. He was a hunter. And we were excited by the

flood’s interruption of the road. The rising of the

wild water had moved us back in time.

Elton quietly opened his door and got out and then,

instead of slamming the door, just pushed it to. I

did the same and came around and followed him as

he walked slowly down the road, looking for a place

to climb out of the cut.

He was whispering.

and the quietness of the moonlight and the woods came down around us

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Once we had climbed the bank and stepped over

the fence and were walking among the big trees,

we seemed already miles from the truck. The water

gleamed over the bottomlands below us on our

right; you could not see that there had ever been

a road in that place. I followed Elton along the

slope through the trees. Neither of us thought to

use a flashlight, though we each had one, nor did

we talk. The moon gave plenty of light. We could

see everything-underfoot the blooms of twinleaf,

bloodroot, rue anemone, the little stars of spring

beauties, and overhead the littlest branches, even

the blooms on the sugar maples. The ground was

soft from the rain,

The flowers around us seemed to float in the

shadows so that we walked like waders among stars,

uncertain how far down to put our feet. And over

we hardly made a sound.

the broad shine of the backwater, the calling of

the peepers rose like another flood, higher than the

water flood, and thrilled and trembled in the air.

It was a long walk because we had to go around the

inlets of the backwater that lay in every swag and

hollow. Way off, now and again, we could hear the

owls. Once we startled a deer and stood still while

it plunged away into the shadows. And always we

were walking among flowers. I wanted to keep

thinking that they were like stars, but after a while

I could not think so. They were not like stars. They

did not have that hard, distant glitter. And yet in

their pale, peaceful way, they shone. They collected

their little share of light and gave it back. Now and

then, when we came to an especially thick patch

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of them, Elton would point. Or he would raise his

hand and we would

to the owls.

I was wider awake than I had been since morning

would have been glad to go on walking all night

long. Around us we could feel the year coming, as

strong and wide and irresistible as a wind.

stop a minute and listen

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10

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Ask the world to reveal its quietude not the silence of machines when they are still, but the true quiet by which birdsongs, trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms become what they are, and are nothing else.

12

I owned a slope full of stones.

Like buried pianos they lay in the ground,

shards of old sea-ledges, stumbling blocks

where the earth caught and kept them

dark, an old music mute in them

that my head keeps now I have dug them out.

I broke them where they slugged in their dark

cells, and lifted them up in pieces.

As I piled them in the light

I began their music. I heard their old lime

rouse in breath of song that has not left me.

I gave pain and weariness to their bearing out.

What bond have I made with the earth,

having worn myself against it? It is a fatal singing

I have carried with me out ofthat day.

The stones have given me music

that figures for me their holes in the earth

and their long lying in them dark.

They have taught me the weariness that loves the ground,

and

The Stones

I must prepare a fitting silence.

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I must prepare a fitting silence

14

Awake at Night

Late in the night I pay

the unrest lowe

to the life that has never lived

and cannot live now.

What the world could be

is my good dream

and my agony when, dreaming it

I lie awake and turn

and look into the dark.

I think of a luxury

in the sturdiness and grace

of necessary things, not

ill frivolity. That would heal

the earth, and heal men.

But the end, too, is part

of the pattern, the last

labor of the heart:

one with the earth

again, and let the world go.

to learn to lie still,

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Growing weather; enough rain;

the cow's udder tight with milk;

the peach tree bent with its yield;

honey golden in the white comb,

the pastures deep in clover and grass,

enough, and more than enough;

the ground, new worked, moist

and yielding underfoot, the feet

comfortable in it as roots;

the early garden: potatoes, onions,

peas, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, carrots,

radishes, marking their straight rows

with green, before the trees are leafed,

raspberries ripe and heavy amid their foliage,

currants shining red in clusters amid their foliage,

strawberries red ripe with the white

flowers still on the vines-picked

with the dew on them, before breakfast;

grape clusters heavy under broad leaves,

powdery bloom on fruit black with sweetness

- an ancient delight, delighting;

the bodies of children, joyful

without dread of their spending,

surprised at nightfall to be weary;

the bodies of women in loose cotton,

cool and closed in the evenings

of summer, like contented houses,

the bodies of men, able in the heat

The Satisfactions of the Mad Farmer

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and sweat and weight and length

of the day's work, eager in their spending,

attending to nightfall, the bodies of women;

sleep after love, dreaming

white lilies blooming

coolly out of the flesh;

after sleep, enablement

to go on with work, morning a clear gift;

the maidenhood of the day,

cobwebs unbroken in the dewy grass;

the work of feeding and clothing and housing,

done with more than enough knowledge

and with more than enough love,

by those who do not have to be told;

any building well built, the rafters

firm to the walls, the walls firm,

the joists without give,

the proportions clear,

the fitting exact, even unseen,

bolts and hinges that turn home

without a jiggle;

any work worthy

of the day's maidenhood;

any man whose words

lead precisely to what exists,

who never stoops to persuasion;

the talk of friends, lightened and cleared

by all that can be assumed;

deer tracks in the wet path,

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the deer sprung from them, gone on;

live streams, live shiftings

of the sun in the summer woods;

the great hollow-trunked beech,

a landmark I loved to return to,

its leaves gold-lit on the silver

branches in the fall: blown down

after a hundred years of standing,

a footbridge over the stream;

the voice of a pewee passing through it

like a tight silver wire;

a little clearing among cedars,

white clover and wild strawberries

beneath an opening to the sky

-heavenly, I thought it,

so perfect;

the quiet in the woods of a summer morning,

had I foreseen it

I would have desired it

no less than it deserves;

fox tracks in snow, the impact

of lightness upon lightness,

unendingly silent.

What I know of spirit is astir

in the world. The god I have always expected

to appear at the woods' edge, beckoning,

I have always expected to be

a great relisher of this world, its good

grown immortal in his mind.

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20

Communication is not necessarily

cooperative. “Get big or get out” is a

communication, and hardly expectant

of a reply. But conversation is necessarily

cooperative, and it can carry us, far

beyond the principle of competition, to

an understanding of common interest.

By conversation a university or a city and

its region could define themselves as one

community rather than an assortment

ofcompeting interests. Center and periphery,

city and country, consumers and producers

do not have to define themselves as

economic adversaries. They can begin to be a

community simply by asking: What can we do

for each other? What do you need that we can

supply you with or do for you? What do you

need to know that we can tell you?

Once the conversation has started, it will

quickly become obvious, I think, that there

must be a common, agreed upon standard

of judgment; and I think this will have to

be health: the health of ecosystems and of

human communities.

There will have to be also a common idea,

or hope, of economic justice. The operative

principles here would be production controls,

to prevent surpluses from being used as a

weapon against producers; and fairness,

granting to small producers and tradespeople

the same marketing advantages as to large

ones. And so goodbye to volume discounts.

Excerpt from “Local Knowledge in the Age of Information”

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My third point is that the means of human

communication are limited, and that we dare

not forget this. There is some knowledge that

cannot be communicated by communication

technology, the accumulation of tape-

recorded “oral histories” not withstanding.

For what may be the most essential

knowledge, how to work well in one’s place,

language simply is not an adequate vehicle.

To return again to land use as an example,

farming itself, like life itself, is different from

information or knowledge or anything else

that can be verbally communicated. It is not

just the local application of science; it is also

the local practice of a local art and the living

of a local life.

As farmers never tire of repeating, you can’t

learn to farm by reading a book, and you can‘t

tell somebody how to farm. Older farmers I

knew used to be fond of saying, “I can’t tell

you how to do that, but I can put you where

you can learn.” There is such a thing, then, as

in communicable knowledge, knowledge that

comes only by experience and by association.

There is in addition for us humans, always,

the unknown, things perhaps that we need

to know that we do not know and are never

going to know. There is mystery. Obvious as

it is, we easily forget that beyond our sciences

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This is a plea for humility.

and our arts, beyond our technology and

our language, is the irreducible reality of

our precious world that somehow, so far, has

withstood our demands and accommodated

our life, and ofwhich we will always be

dangerously ignorant.

Our great modern powers of science,

technology, and industry are always offering

themselves to us with the suggestion that we

know enough to use them well, that we are

intelligent enough to act without limit in our

own behalf. But the evidence is now rapidly

mounting against us. By living as wedo, in our

ignorance and our pride, we are diminishing

our world and the possibility of life.

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This is a plea for humility

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I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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Fidelity

Hannah Coulter

Jayber Crow

The Memory of Old Jack

Nathan Coulter

A Place on Earth

Remembering

That Distant Land

Watch with Me

The Wild Birds

A World Lost

The Broken Ground

Clearing

Collected Poems: 1951-1982

The Country of Marriage

Entries

Farming: A Hand Book

Findings

Given

Openings

A Part

Sabbaths

Sayings and Doings

The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (I998)

A Timbered Choir

The Wheel

Other Works

EssaysFiction Poetry

Another Turn of the Crank

The Art of the Commonplace

Citizenship Papers

A Continuous Harmony

The Gift of Good Land

Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work

The Hidden Wound

Home Economics

Life Is a Miracle

The Long-Legged House

Recollected Essays: 1965-1980

Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community

Standing by Words

The Unforeseen Wilderness

The Unsettling of America

What Are People For?

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This book was printed in the Communication Design studio at Washington University in St. Louis by Erin Miller during the Spring 2011 semester. No part of this book may be recreated or copied without permission of the author.

Bibliography

Berry, Wendell. “Are You Alright?” Fidelity: five stories. New

York: Pantheon Books, 1992.

Berry, Wendell. “Awake at Night.” Collected poems. San

Francisco: North Point Press, 1984. 103.

Berry, Wendell. “Local Knowledge in the Age of

Informaiton.” The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays.

Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005. 151.

Berry, Wendell. “On the Hill Late at Night.” Collected

poems. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984. 113.

Berry, Wendell. “The Satisfactions of the Mad Farmer”

Collected poems. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984.

132.

Berry, Wendell. “The Silence.” Collected poems. San

Francisco: North Point Press, 1984. 111.

Berry, Wendell. “The Stones.” Collected poems. San

Francisco: North Point Press, 1984. 103.