Wendell Berry 1

In this World

The hill pasture, an open place among the trees,
tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses
are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill
dark floodwater moves down the river.
The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing.
I have climbed up to water the horses
and now sit and rest, high on the hillside,
letting the day gather and pass. Below me
cattle graze out across the wide fields of the bottomlands,
Slow and preoccupied as stars. In this world
men are making plans, wearing themselves out,
spending their lives, in order to kill each other.
–Wendell Berry

Berry and I are the same age. We are both philosophical and agricultural in orientation. I stayed in the classroom to teach philosophy and theology; he left the classroom to return to the family farm, write poetry and essays, and farm it the old way–without tractors, erosion, and every square foot plowed.

Berry in Kentucky, Roark in Oklahoma. At sunset I have ridden Queeny and Coley to the pasture tank to water at the end of a day’s work. I stayed aboard as they waded out, knee-deep, sinking in mud, then stretching their neck, nosing under water, hurriedly, greedily, sucking in long, deep draughts of murky liquid. I sat, listening to them, watching the tree limbs flow with the cool breeze, watching the sun go down.

I was young, not a care in the world. The year was 1943. The team belonged to Uncle Booten, my always pleasant uncle with the wooden leg. His son, Billy, the finest in the county everyone said, had just been shot down while parachuting somewhere over Holland. Billy knew Queeny and Colie before I did.

Berry was writing in the 1960s, Vietnam days. Tonight I sat out back cutting up downfall apples and tossing the bits to my backyard banties. A peaceable evening, granddaughter coming for a summer visit in another hour or so. And still, in 2007, “In this world men are making plans, wearing themselves out, spending their lives in order to kill each other–Iraqis, Americans, and their remaining allies.

I visit tonight with our youngest granddaughter. Our second grandson, a Marine, will sleep tonight, maybe, with one eye open, in Bagdad.

Do we really think we can ever make them be like us? Do we really think we can ever make them want to be like us. “Don’t ever feel useless. You can always serve as a bad example.”