Estranged by Distance

Estranged by distance, he relearns 

The way to quiet not his own, 

The light at rest on tree and stone,

The high leaves falling their turns,

Spiraling through the air made gold

By their slow fall. Bright on the ground, 

They wait their darkening, commend

To coming light the light they hold.

His own long comedown from the air

Complete, safe home again, absence

Withdrawing from him tense by tense

In presence of the resting year.

Blessing and blessed in this result

Of times not blessed, now he has risen.

He walks in quiet beyond division

In surcease of his own tumult. 

Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir

The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997: 1984, 5.

A Sabbath Poem

Another Sunday morning comes
And I resume the standing Sabbath
Of the woods, where the finest blooms
Of time return, and where no path

Is worn but wears its makers out
At last, and disappears in leaves
Of fallen seasons. The tracked rut
Fills and levels; here nothing grieves

In the risen season. Past life
Lives in the living. Resurrection
Is in the way each maple leaf
Commemorates its kind, by connection

Outreaching understanding. What rises
Rises into comprehension
And beyond. Even falling raises
In praise of light. What is begun

Is unfinished. And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration. The bud swells,

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,
Being becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not dimmed by us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

Wendell Berry
A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997
1979: II