Given Quotes

“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“How to be a Poet

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity…

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensional life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“The soil under the grass is dreaming of a young forest, and under the pavement the soil is dreaming of grass.”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.

Sabbaths 1999 II”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“A tree forms itself in answer
to its place and the light.
Explain it how you will, the only
thing explainable will be
your explanation.”
Sabbaths 1999 IV”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“I’ve come down from the sky
like some damned ghost, delayed
too long…To the abandoned fields
the trees returned and grew.
They stand and grow. Time comes
To them, time goes, the trees
Stand; the only place
They go is where they are.
Those wholly patient ones…
They do no wrong, and they
Are beautiful. What more
Could we have thought to ask?...
I stand and wait for light
to open the dark night.
I stand and wait for prayer
to come and find me here.”

Sabbaths 2000 IX”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“…it charms
mere eyesight to believe
The nearest thing not trees
Is the sky, into which
The trees reach, opening
their luminous new leaves…
and thought finds rest
beneath a brightened tree
In which, unseen, a warbler
feeds and sings. His song’s
Small shapely melody
Comes down irregularly,
as all light’s givings come.”
Sabbaths 1999 III”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“We travelers, walking to the sun, can’t see
Ahead, but looking back the very light
That blinded us shows us the way we came,
Along which blessings now appear, risen
As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,
By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward
That blessed light that yet to us is dark.

Sabbaths 1999 VI”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“A tree forms itself in answer
to its place and the light.
Explain it how you will, the only
thing explainable will be
your explanation.

Sabbaths 1999 IV”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“the inlet

our friend looks as he did
when we first knew him,
and until I wake I believe
I will die of grief, for I know
that this boy grew into a man
who was a faithful friend
who died.”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“But do the Lords of War in fact hate the world? That would be easy to bear, if so. If they hated their children and the flowers that grow in the warming light, that would be easy to bear. For then we could hate the haters and be right. What is hard is to imagine the Lords of War may love the things that they destroy.”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“…My mind became/ beautiful by the sight of him. He had the beauty only/ of himself alive in the only moment of his life./ He had upon him like a light the whole/beauty of the living world that never dies.

Sabbaths 2003 VI”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“I know for a while again the health of self-forgetfulness.

Sabbaths 2000 V”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“VI We travelers, walking to the sun, can’t see Ahead, but looking back the very light That blinded us shows us the way we came, Along which blessings now appear, risen As if from sightlessness to sight, and we, By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward That blessed light that yet to us is dark.”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

— Wendell Berry, from “How To Be a Poet,” Given. (Counterpoint March 1, 2006) Originally published 2005.”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“But won’t you be ashamed To count the passing year At its mere cost, your debt Inevitably paid? For every year is costly, As you know well. Nothing Is given that is not Taken, and nothing taken That was not first a gift.”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“…joy teaches him
to rise, to stand and move out through
the opening the light has made.
He stands on the green hilltop amid
the cedars, the skewed stones, the earth all
opened doors…

Sabbaths 2001 I”
― Wendell Berry, Given

“When we convene again
to understand the world,
the first speaker will again
point silently out the window
at the hillside in its season…
and we will nod silently,
and silently stand and go.

Sabbaths 2000 II”
― Wendell Berry, Given