Wendell Berry




   From the Distance

        1.
We are others and the earth, 
the living of the dead.
Remembering who we are,
we live in eternity;
any solitary act
is work of community.

        2.
All times are one
if heart delight
in work, if hands
join the world right.

        3.
The wheel of eternity is turning
in time, its rhymes, austere,
at long intervals returning,
sing in the mind, not in the ear.

        4.
A man of faithful thought may feel
in light, among the beasts and fields,
the turning of the wheel.

        5.
Fall of the year:
at evening a frail mist
rose, glowing in the rain.
The dead and unborn drew near
the fire. A song, not mine,
stuttered in the flame.