The Mad Farmer Revolution
Being a Fragment
of the Natural History of New Eden,
in Homage
To Mr. Ed McClanahan, One of the Locals
by Wendell Berry


The mad farmer, the thirsty one,
went dry. When he had time
he threw a visionary high
lonesome on the holy communion wine.
"It is an awesome event
when an earthen man has drunk
his fill of the blood of a god,"
people said, and got out of his way.
He plowed the churchyard, the
minister's wife, three graveyards
and a golf course. In a parking lot
he planted a forest of little pines.
He sanctified the groves,
dancing at night in the oak shades
with goddesses. He led
a field of corn to creep up
and tassel like an Indian tribe
on the courthouse lawn. Pumpkins
ran out to the ends of their vines
to follow him. Ripe plums
and peaches reached into his pockets.
Flowers sprang up in his tracks
everywhere he stepped. And then
his planter's eye fell on
that parson's fair fine lady
again. "O holy plowman," cried she,
"I am all grown up in weeds.
Pray, bring me back into good tilth."
He tilled her carefully
and laid her by, and she
did bring forth others of her kind,
and others, and some more.
They sowed and reaped till all
the countryside was filled
with farmers and their brides sowing
and reaping. When they died
they became two spirits of the woods.
On their graves were written
these words without sound:
"Here lies Saint Plowman.
Here lies Saint Fertile Ground."


Wendell Berry
Shenandoah Magazine
Volume 50, Number 1
Spring 2000

Really? Puritanical censorship here? So no poems about, say, love, making love, metaphor-free? Because there are some beautiful ones, and I was thinking of posting one particular one - well, I'm going to post it anyway and see what happens. It's so innocent yet so truthful - it would really discredit any censor to delete it.

Once again, William, you have added greatly to our little thread here.
My appreciation for your participation

Showing closeness between lovers, the poet reveals openly
and tenderly, the strong bond that exists between them.
Galway Kinell passed away last month - a man who believed
it was the job of poets to bear witness.
"poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as
little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on
earth at this moment."

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

Hymn
by A.R. Ammmons

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth
and go on out over the sea marshes and the brant in bays
and over the hills of tall hickory
and over the crater lakes and canyons
and on up through the spheres of diminishing air
past the blackset noctilucent clouds where no one wants to stop and look
way past all the light diffusions and bombardments
up farther than the loss of sight into the undifferentiated empty stark

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth
inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes
trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest coelenterates
and praying for a nerve cell
with all the soul of my chemical reactions
and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

You are everywhere partial and entire
You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum
has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut
and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark
chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down
and if I find you I must go out deep into your far resolutions
and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves

The Selected Poems, Expanded Edition
A.R. Ammons
W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1986

last one...and sorry to be pushing the page...


First Sight
by W. S. Merwin

There once more the new moon in spring
above the roofs of the village
in the clear sky the cold twilight
under the evening star the thin
shell sinking so lightly it seems
not to be moving and no sound
from the village at this moment
nor from the valley below it
with its still river nor even
from any of the birds and I
have been standing here in this light
seeing this moon and its one star
while the cows went home with their bells
and the sheep were folded and gone
and the elders fell silent one
after another and loved souls
were no longer seen and my hair
turned white and I was looking up
out of a time of late blessings

The Pupil
W. S. Merwin
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002