Wendell Berry
No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.
I’m not sure why Wendell Barry is carpeting my footfall these days. This is the third poem of his that has come into my life to live. Yes I have lived many more from Mary Oliver. Her poems, though, are more comforting than compelling. Wendell Barry’s hit a nerve. They point you in a direction and ask you to do something, to be something.
Am I now to give myself away? To open my heart and my soul to the world for the taking? To be vulnerable, to be consumed or as John Donne has said to be “ravished.”
I need some time to think about this. Can I really go out without my stoic shields? I have always been honest. My only artifice is a smile. Can I really let myself cry? Can I accept other people’s tears. Can I unbuckle the armour of my heart and give it away.
It would take the strength of a lifetime.