I’m not a big fan of bios - I don’t hoard them like a crazed squirrel to replant. But I like Wendell Berry’s bio in the On Being page, where he reads the poem I’m sharing today - at least the first four words.
“Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, and environmentalist who has published more than 50 books. He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky.”
I think the pain of the natural world sweetened as fruit and wind is the occupational hazard of poets. because a poet’s mark isn’t words, it is feeling, and our lot is to translate the dust of sensation, transmute nature into the language of people. In this time when we are all alone together, and making congress with the world has become a kind of nostalgia of the future, I am in gratitude for nature. for the stench of dung, the wetness of grass that cuts with the finesse of words spoken without thought, for buffalo hooves that fall into ponds in a delirium of heat, for trees who grow new roots from their branches, letting us rest under awnings sprouting from their outstretched hands.
if this is not kindness than what is?
