Friday – Earth Day
There’s no better way to begin Earth Day than with a poem by Wendell Berry. In “Enriching the Earth,” the Kentucky poet meditates upon his different contributions to the cycle of life. The clover and grass seeds that he sows are destined to grow and die, just as the winter wheat is designed to be plowed back into the earth to enrich it. (“The cut worm forgives the plow,” William Blake tells us.) By stirring into the ground “the offal and the decay of the growth of past seasons,” the farmer has “mended the earth and made its yield increase.”
Berry himself is not exempt from this cycle. If, as a younger man, he actively aided the earth in the cycle, as he grows older he finds himself receiving more than giving. “When the will fails so do the hands,” he says, “and one lives at the expense of life.”
But that’s okay because he is preparing for a time when he will serve the earth in yet another way. He may be “slowly falling into the fund of things”—“all this serves the dark,” he writes— but rather than fearing this, he discovers that the thought of his body one day “entering the earth” only intensifies his engagement with nature. As he puts it,
And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass.
In other words, he lives fully in the moment as the air around him seems to expand.
And when the final moment comes—when the days do in fact pass—the aspect of ourselves that is “the heaviest and most mute” will enrich the earth in its own way. At this point, we will enter fully into the song of creation.
Enriching the Earth
By Wendell Berry
To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. Against the shadow
of veiled possibility my workdays stand
in a most asking light. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind’s service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.