Thursday Short Poem: Berry's "The Country of Marriage"

With our wedding date not far off now, this poem seems more than appropriate for the Thursday Short Poem.  I'm a big fan of the prose, poetry, and world view of Wendell Berry -- and his musings on sexuality and community have been provocative challenges to me.  This is a bit longer than what I usually post, but it is undeniably splendid.

The Country of Marriage

I.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

II.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.

III.

Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

IV.

How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.

V.

Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen tine and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.

VI.

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

VII.

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.

It's very fine.  And I love this bit:

You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.

I love you, my sweet girl.

Comments

[Rachel]

Splendid indeed. I had the pleasure of writing an article about Berry and his work (for the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry) and found that immersing in his poetry had a wonderful effect on me. I value him as one of our foremost poets of place, and also as a fantastic poet of the sacred; I see his theology all over his poetry, though it's never presented in an exclusionary or dogmatic way.

[Hugo]

Oh, Rachel, I'll have to look up the article. Do you enjoy his prose commentary as much? I find his novels a bit slow for my taste...

[Dwight P]

I'm amazed -- and a little disappointed that you find his novels slow going -- or rather that you don't enjoy that about them. I adore his novels. I think the sense of place, of mystery, of reverence, of meaning come to a point there in living majesty. "Jayber Crow" may be my favorite novel -- period. (It may not be the best novel ever written, but it moves me every time I read it. I have to set it aside every five or ten pages to just savor the language I've just swum in.) It is the most fantastic meditation on fidelity that I can imagine -- and I have on occasion given it as a wedding gift. Our book group read it as our very first group effort, and it remains most of the members' favorite -- after three years of monthly selections.

But I commend you for posting this poem. He is able to put words together in a way that makes them seem to have been born, siamese-twin-like, linked.

I certainly wish you all the best on your impending nuptials.

Dwight

[Hugo]

Dwight, one of the reasons I love poetry so much -- especially shorter poems, is that my attention span is not well-suited to novels that take "their time." I suppose that's why I rather like Jim Harrison's stuff (an embarrassing admission) more than Berry's, even if I find Berry's worldview more congenial. From the hustle and the bustle of the urban world, I like knowing that others lead slower lives. Doesn't mean I could lead that life myself...

[amy]

Hugo, thanks for sharing this. If it weren't for short poem Thursdays at your place, I'd read very few of them indeed. I'm not quite sure why, but this was my favorite part:

the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed