Easing through the day

Sometimes there is just music and poetry to ease us through the day.

Wendell Berry
Sabbath Poems 2007
(from Leavings)

III

Yes, though hope is our duty,
let us live a while without it
to show ourselves we can.
Let us see that, without hope,
we are still well. Let hopelessness
shrink us to our proper size.
Without it we are half as large
as yesterday, and the world
is twice as large. My small
place grows immense as I walk
upon it without hope.
Our springtime rue anemones
as I walk among them, hoping
not even to live, are beautiful
as Eden and I their kinsman
are immortal in their moment.

Out of charity let us pray
for the great ones of politics
and war, the intellectuals,
scientists and advisers,
the golden industrialists,
the CEO's, that they too
may wake to a day without hope
that in their smallness they
may know the greatness of Earth
and Heaven by which they so far
live, that they may see
themselves in their enemies, 
and from their great wants fallen
know the small immortal
joys of beasts and birds.

VII

In time a man disappears
from his lifelong fields, from
the streams he has walked beside,
from the woods where he sat and waited.
Thinking of this he seems to
miss himself in those places
as if he had always been there, 
watching for himself to return .
But first he must disappear, 
and this he foresees with hope,
with thanks. Let others come.

 Miles Davis, Blue in Green from Kind of Blue