A
Speech to the Garden Club of America
by Wendell
Berry
(With thanks to Wes Jackson
and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)
Thank you. I’m glad to know
we’re friends, of course;
There are so many outcomes
that are worse.
But I must add I’m sorry for
getting here
By a sustained explosion
through the air,
Burning the world in fact to
rise much higher
Than we should go. The world
may end in fire
As prophesied—our world! We speak of it
As “fuel” while we burn it in
our fit
Of temporary progress,
digging up
An antique dark-held luster
to corrupt
The present light with smokes
and smudges, poison
To outlast time and shatter
comprehension.
Burning the world to live in
it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to
get along
And be at peace, to falsify
the land
By sciences of greed, or by
demand
For food that’s fast or cheap
to falsify
The body’s health and
pleasure—don’t ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why
not survive
By Nature’s laws that still
keep us alive?
Let us enlighten, then, our
earthly burdens
By going back to school, this
time in gardens
That burn no hotter than the
summer day.
By birth and growth,
ripeness, death and decay,
By goods that bind us to all
living things,
Life of our life, the garden
lives and sings.
The Wheel of Life, delight,
the fact of wonder,
Contemporary light, work,
sweat, and hunger
Bring food to table, food to
cellar shelves.
A creature of the surface,
like ourselves,
The garden lives by the
immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year
after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic
pyre
That draws from ancient rock
a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and
fume
That burns as power and
remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper
than its roots
And lifts no higher than its
leaves and fruits.
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