Be Still by Erin Miller

Be Still

Selected Works of Wendell Berry

Be Still

Selected Works of Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry lives and farms with his family in Henry County, Kentucky, and is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Berry’s life, his farm work, his writing and teaching, his home and family, and all that each involves are extraordinarily integrated. He understands his writing as an attempt to elucidate certain connections, primarily the interrelationships and interdependencies of man and the natural world. Berry’s premise, implicit, often explicit, in almost all of his work, is that we must have a particular place, must identify with it, must learn from it, must love it, must care for it. And only by living in this place long enough, and by attending to the knowledge of those who have lived there before us, will we fully realize the consequences of our presence there: “We may deeply affect a place we own for good or ill,” Berry has written, “but our lives are nevertheless included in its life; it will survive us, bearing the results”

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 ofengines and ofhis 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 furrow he opens in the earth opens in his bones,

and he hears the silence

of the tongues ofthe 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!

On the Hill Late at Night a silence

The ripe grassheads bend in the starlight

their roar is

in the soft wind, beneath them the darkness

and felt the country turn under the stars

of the grass, fathomless, the long blades

toward dawn. I am wholly willing to be here

rising out ofthe well of time. Cars

between the bright silent thousands of stars

travel the valley roads below me, their lights

and the life ofthe grass pouring out ofthe ground.

finding the dark, and racing on. Above

The hill has grown to me like a foot.

I have suddenly heard,

Until I lift the earth I cannot move.

a silence

Excerpt from “Are You Alright?” Elton stopped the truck. He turned off his

“Listen!” Elton said again.

He was whispering.

headlights and the engine, The owls went through their whole repertory of

and the quietness of the moonlight and the woods came down around us

hoots and clucks and cackles and gobbles. “Listen to them!” Elton said. “They’ve got a lot on

I could hear the peepers again. It was wonderful

their minds.” Being in the woods at night excited

what the road going under the water did to that

him. He was a hunter. And we were excited by the

place. It was not only that we could not go where

flood’s interruption of the road. The rising of the

we were used to going; it was as if a thought that

wild water had moved us back in time.

we were used to thinking could not be thought. “Listen!” Elton said. He had heard a barred owl off in the woods. He quietly rolled the window down.

Elton quietly opened his door and got out and then, instead of slamming the door, just pushed it to. I did the same and came around and followed him as

And then, right overhead, an owl answered:

he walked slowly down the road, looking for a place

“HOOOOOAWWW!”

to climb out of the cut.

And the far one said, “Hoo hoo hoohooaw!”

Once we had climbed the bank and stepped over

the broad shine of the backwater, the calling of

the fence and were walking among the big trees,

the peepers rose like another flood, higher than the

we seemed already miles from the truck. The water

water flood, and thrilled and trembled in the air.

gleamed over the bottomlands below us on our right; you could not see that there had ever been

It was a long walk because we had to go around the

a road in that place. I followed Elton along the

inlets of the backwater that lay in every swag and

slope through the trees. Neither of us thought to

hollow. Way off, now and again, we could hear the

use a flashlight, though we each had one, nor did

owls. Once we startled a deer and stood still while

we talk. The moon gave plenty of light. We could

it plunged away into the shadows. And always we

see everything-underfoot the blooms of twinleaf,

were walking among flowers. I wanted to keep

bloodroot, rue anemone, the little stars of spring

thinking that they were like stars, but after a while

beauties, and overhead the littlest branches, even

I could not think so. They were not like stars. They

the blooms on the sugar maples. The ground was

did not have that hard, distant glitter. And yet in

soft from the rain,

their pale, peaceful way, they shone. They collected

we hardly made a sound.

The flowers around us seemed to float in the

their little share of light and gave it back. Now and

shadows so that we walked like waders among stars,

then, when we came to an especially thick patch

uncertain how far down to put our feet. And over

of them, Elton would point. Or he would raise his hand and we would

stop a minute and listen

to the owls. I was wider awake than I had been since morning would have been glad to go on walking all night long. Around us we could feel the year coming, as strong and wide and irresistible as a wind.

Ask the world to reveal its quietude not the silence of machines when they are still, but the true quiet by which birdsongs, trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms become what they are, and are nothing else. 11

The Stones I owned a slope full of stones.

What bond have I made with the earth,

Like buried pianos they lay in the ground,

having worn myself against it? It is a fatal singing

shards of old sea-ledges, stumbling blocks

I have carried with me out ofthat day.

where the earth caught and kept them

The stones have given me music

dark, an old music mute in them

that figures for me their holes in the earth

that my head keeps now I have dug them out.

and their long lying in them dark.

I broke them where they slugged in their dark

They have taught me the weariness that loves the ground,

cells, and lifted them up in pieces.

and

As I piled them in the light I began their music. I heard their old lime rouse in breath of song that has not left me. I gave pain and weariness to their bearing out.

I must prepare a fitting silence.

I must prepare a fitting silence

Awake at Night Late in the night I pay

I lie awake and turn

But the end, too, is part

the unrest lowe

and look into the dark.

of the pattern, the last

to the life that has never lived

I think of a luxury

labor of the heart:

and cannot live now.

in the sturdiness and grace

What the world could be

of necessary things, not

one with the earth

is my good dream

ill frivolity. That would heal

again, and let the world go.

and my agony when, dreaming it

the earth, and heal men.

to learn to lie still,

The Satisfactions of the Mad Farmer Growing weather; enough rain;

strawberries red ripe with the white

the cow's udder tight with milk;

flowers still on the vines-picked

the peach tree bent with its yield;

with the dew on them, before breakfast;

honey golden in the white comb, grape clusters heavy under broad leaves, the pastures deep in clover and grass,

powdery bloom on fruit black with sweetness

enough, and more than enough;

- an ancient delight, delighting;

the ground, new worked, moist

the bodies of children, joyful

and yielding underfoot, the feet

without dread of their spending,

comfortable in it as roots;

surprised at nightfall to be weary;

the early garden: potatoes, onions,

the bodies of women in loose cotton,

peas, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, carrots,

cool and closed in the evenings

radishes, marking their straight rows

of summer, like contented houses,

with green, before the trees are leafed, the bodies of men, able in the heat

raspberries ripe and heavy amid their foliage, currants shining red in clusters amid their foliage,

and sweat and weight and length

firm to the walls, the walls firm,

of the day's work, eager in their spending,

the joists without give,

attending to nightfall, the bodies of women;

the proportions clear, the fitting exact, even unseen,

sleep after love, dreaming

bolts and hinges that turn home

white lilies blooming

without a jiggle;

coolly out of the flesh; any work worthy after sleep, enablement

of the day's maidenhood;

to go on with work, morning a clear gift; the maidenhood of the day,

any man whose words

cobwebs unbroken in the dewy grass;

lead precisely to what exists, who never stoops to persuasion;

the work of feeding and clothing and housing, done with more than enough knowledge

the talk of friends, lightened and cleared

and with more than enough love,

by all that can be assumed;

by those who do not have to be told;

deer tracks in the wet path,

any building well built, the rafters

the deer sprung from them, gone on;

so perfect;

had I foreseen it

live streams, live shiftings

I would have desired it

of the sun in the summer woods;

no less than it deserves;

the great hollow-trunked beech,

fox tracks in snow, the impact

a landmark I loved to return to,

of lightness upon lightness,

its leaves gold-lit on the silver

unendingly silent.

branches in the fall: blown down after a hundred years of standing,

What I know of spirit is astir

a footbridge over the stream;

in the world. The god I have always expected to appear at the woods' edge, beckoning,

the quiet in the woods of a summer morning,

I have always expected to be

the voice of a pewee passing through it

a great relisher of this world, its good

like a tight silver wire;

grown immortal in his mind.

a little clearing among cedars, white clover and wild strawberries beneath an opening to the sky -heavenly, I thought it,

Excerpt from “Local Knowledge in the Age of Information” Communication is not necessarily

Once the conversation has started, it will

cooperative. “Get big or get out” is a

quickly become obvious, I think, that there

communication, and hardly expectant

must be a common, agreed upon standard

of a reply. But conversation is necessarily

of judgment; and I think this will have to

cooperative, and it can carry us, far

be health: the health of ecosystems and of

beyond the principle of competition, to

human communities.

an understanding of common interest.

There will have to be also a common idea,

By conversation a university or a city and

or hope, of economic justice. The operative

its region could define themselves as one

principles here would be production controls,

community rather than an assortment

to prevent surpluses from being used as a

ofcompeting interests. Center and periphery,

weapon against producers; and fairness,

city and country, consumers and producers

granting to small producers and tradespeople

do not have to define themselves as

the same marketing advantages as to large

economic adversaries. They can begin to be a

ones. And so goodbye to volume discounts.

community simply by asking: What can we do for each other? What do you need that we can supply you with or do for you? What do you need to know that we can tell you?

My third point is that the means of human

As farmers never tire of repeating, you can’t

communication are limited, and that we dare

learn to farm by reading a book, and you can‘t

not forget this. There is some knowledge that

tell somebody how to farm. Older farmers I

cannot be communicated by communication

knew used to be fond of saying, “I can’t tell

technology, the accumulation of tape-

you how to do that, but I can put you where

recorded “oral histories” not withstanding.

you can learn.” There is such a thing, then, as

For what may be the most essential

in communicable knowledge, knowledge that

knowledge, how to work well in one’s place,

comes only by experience and by association.

language simply is not an adequate vehicle. To return again to land use as an example, farming itself, like life itself, is different from information or knowledge or anything else that can be verbally communicated. It is not just the local application of science; it is also

There is in addition for us humans, always, the unknown, things perhaps that we need to know that we do not know and are never going to know. There is mystery. Obvious as it is, we easily forget that beyond our sciences

the local practice of a local art and the living of a local life.

and our arts, beyond our technology and our language, is the irreducible reality of our precious world that somehow, so far, has withstood our demands and accommodated our life, and ofwhich we will always be dangerously ignorant. Our great modern powers of science, technology, and industry are always offering themselves to us with the suggestion that we know enough to use them well, that we are intelligent enough to act without limit in our own behalf. But the evidence is now rapidly mounting against us. By living as wedo, in our ignorance and our pride, we are diminishing our world and the possibility of life. This is a plea for humility.

This is a plea for humility

I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. 25

Other Works

Fiction

Poetry

Essays

Fidelity

The Broken Ground

Another Turn of the Crank

Hannah Coulter

Clearing

The Art of the Commonplace

Jayber Crow

Collected Poems: 1951-1982

Citizenship Papers

The Memory of Old Jack

The Country of Marriage

A Continuous Harmony

Nathan Coulter

Entries

The Gift of Good Land

A Place on Earth

Farming: A Hand Book

Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work

Remembering

Findings

The Hidden Wound

That Distant Land

Given

Home Economics

Watch with Me

Openings

Life Is a Miracle

The Wild Birds

A Part

The Long-Legged House

A World Lost

Sabbaths

Recollected Essays: 1965-1980

Sayings and Doings

Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community

The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (I998)

Standing by Words

A Timbered Choir

The Unforeseen Wilderness

The Wheel

The Unsettling of America What Are People For?

Bibliography

Berry, Wendell. “Are You Alright?” Fidelity: five stories. New

Berry, Wendell. “The Silence.” Collected poems. San

York: Pantheon Books, 1992.

Francisco: North Point Press, 1984. 111.

Berry, Wendell. “Awake at Night.” Collected poems. San

Berry, Wendell. “The Stones.” Collected poems. San

Francisco: North Point Press, 1984. 103.

Berry, Wendell. “Local Knowledge in the Age of Informaiton.” The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays.

This book was printed in the Communication Design studio at Washington University in St. Louis by Erin Miller during the Spring 2011 semester. No part of this book may be recreated or copied without permission of the author.

Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005. 151. Berry, Wendell. “On the Hill Late at Night.” Collected poems. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984. 113. Berry, Wendell. “The Satisfactions of the Mad Farmer” Collected poems. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984. 132.