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Thursday, March 13, 2014

Wendell Berry: "I" ["No, no, there is no going back"]
















No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over the grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.



"I" ["No, no, there is no going back"] (from 1993) by Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997. © Counterpoint, 1999.  

Photography credit: "Grave Under Tree," by Stephanie L. Nicholas, 2012 (originally black and white).


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