to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who

ever wanted to go home

would ever get there now, for every remembered place

had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the

ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love

unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant

to make way for the passage of the crowd

of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated,

the homeless

with their many eyes opened only toward the objective

which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,

having never known where they were going,

having never known where they came from.

XXI.

I was wakened from my dream of the ruined world by the

sound

of rain falling slowly onto the dry earth of my place in time.

On the parched garden, the cracked-open pastures,

the dusty grape leaves, the brittled grass, the drooping

foliage of the woods,

fell still the quiet rain.

XXII.

There is a day

when the road neither

comes nor goes, and the way

is not a way but a place.

XXIII.

The watcher comes, knowing the small

knowledge of his life in this body

in this place in this world. He comes

to a place of rest where he cannot

mistake himself as larger than he is,

the place of the gray flycatcher,

the yellow butterfly, the green dragonfly,

the white violet, the columbine,

where he cannot mistake himself

as more graced or graceful than he is.

At the woods’ edge, the wild rose

is in bloom, beauty and consolation

always in excess of thought.

XXIV.

The year falls also from

the human-borne plagues

that kill the trees, foul

the air, the water, and the earth,

bringing to the world the curse

of frivolous death, the tiresome

novelty of wastefulness,

the ugly forethoughtfulness of fear.

What repair, what

return, will undo the consuming

self-belittlement that inherits,

disvalues, neglects and ruins

the decent small farm –

the earned, kept, and cherished

good of a lifetime’s work

gone – to break the heart?

And yet the light comes.

And yet the light is here.

Over the long shadows

the late light moves

in beauty through the living woods.

Acknowledgements

The poems in this collection were originally published in the following:

The Broken Ground (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964)

Openings (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968)

Farming: A Handbook (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970)

The Country of Marriage (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1973)

Clearing (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1977)

A Part (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1980)

The Wheel (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1982)

Entries (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1994)

A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979–1997 (New York: Counterpoint, 1999)

Given (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2005)

A Small Porch: Sabbath Poems 2014 (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2016)

The poems in this collection are also available in the following Counterpoint Press US editions:

A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979–1997 (New York: Counterpoint, 1999)

New Collected Poems (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2012)

A Small Porch: Sabbath Poems 2014 (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2016)

THE BEGINNING

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