The Silence
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 of engines and of his 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 furrows he opens in the earth opens
in his bones, and he hears the silence
of the tongues of the 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!
by Wendell Berry
from Farming-A Handbook
Harvest Books, 1970