Every Useful thing

 

No doubt

Marshall’s sorrow is the same as human

sorrow generally, but there is this

difference. To live in a doomed city, a doomed

nation, a doomed world is desolating, and we all

are desolate. But to live on a doomed farm

is worse. It must be worse. There the exact

point of connection, gate of conversion, is -

mind and life. The hilltop farms are going.

Bottomland farms, mechanized, are all that survive.

As more and more developers take over

northern Vermont, values of land increase,

taxes increase, farming is an obsolete vocation -

while half the world goes hungry. Marshall walks

his fields and woods, knowing every useful thing

about them, and knowing his knowledge is useless.

 

from Hayden Carruth’s poem Marshall Washer. It’s a good one. You can read the rest of it in this book.