Sabbaths 1998, X

Wendell Berry

Tanya. Now that I am getting old,

I feel I must hurry against time to tell you

(as long ago I started out to do) everything,

though I know that there can be no end

to all there is for me to say to you even of this,

our temporary life. Sometimes it seems to me

that I am divided from you by a shadow

of incomprehension, mine or yours, or mine and yours,

or that I am caught in the misery of selfhood

forever. And I think that this must be

the lot (may God help us) of all mortals who love

each other: to know by truth that they do so,

but also by error. Often now I am reminded

that the time may come (for this is our pledge)

when you will stand by me and know

that I, though “living” still, have gone beyond

all remembering, as my father went in time

before me, or that I have gone, like my mother,

into a time of pain, drugs, and still sleep.

But I know now that in that great distance

on the edge or beyond the edge of this world

I will be growing alight with being. And (listen!)

I will be longing to come back. This

came to me in a dream, near morning,

after I had labored through the night under

this weight of earthly love. On time’s edge, wakened,

shaken, light and free, I will be longing

to return, to seek you through the world,

to find you (recognizing you by your beauty),

to marry you, to make a place to live,

to have children and grandchildren. The light

of that place beyond time will show me the world

as perhaps Christ saw it before His birth

in the stable at Bethlehem. I will see that it is

imperfect. It will be imperfect. (To whom would love

appear but to those in most desperate need?) Yes,

we would err again. Yes, we would suffer

again. Yes, provided you would have it

so, I would do it all again.

James Risberg