To the Holy Spirit*
O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,
Who in necessity and in bounty wait,
Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken,
By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.
Thirty More Years**
When I was a young man,
grown up at last, how large
I seemed to myself! I was a tree,
tall already, and what I had not
yet reached, I would yet grow
to reach. Now, thirty more years
added on, I have reached much
I did not expect, in a direction
unexpected. I am growing downward,
smaller, one among the grasses.
*From "A Part (1980)" included in the anthology New Collected Poems, Wendell Berry, Counterpoint Press, Berkeley, 2012.
**From "Entries (1994)", ibid.
No comments:
Post a Comment