Wendall Berry Sabbath Poem

Tanya and Wendell Berry working in the field, Courtesy of Platform Media Group

Praise “family values,”

“a better future for our children,”

displacing meanwhile the familiar

membership to be a “labor force”

of homeless strangers. Praise

work and name it “jobs.”

With “labor-saving technology”

replace workers at their work

and hold them in contempt

because they have no “jobs.”

Praise “our country” and oppress

the land with poisons, gouges,

blastings, the violent labors and

pleasures of the unresting displaced,

skinning the earth alive.

This is the way, the truth, and the life.

Welcome the refugees set free

from the “nowhere” of rural America,

from the “drudgery” of the household

and the “mind-numbing work”

of shops and farms, into 

the anthills of “liberation”

the endless vistas of “growth,”

of “progress,” the “limitless adventure

of the human spirit” rising

through inward emptiness into

“outer space.” Welcome

the displaced naturally “upwardly

mobile” to their “better world”

as they gather bright-lighted

in “multicultural” masses

in the packed streets. Catch 

those who inevitably

fall from the light-swarm

in meshes of “safety nets,” “benefits,”

“job training,” the army,

the wars, mental hospitals,

jails, graves. Forget

vocation, memory, living

and dying at home. This

is the way, the truth, and the life.

Flourish your weapons of official

war where they are needed

for peace, bring death by chance

but needfully to small houses

where children play at war

or a wedding is taking place

so that the bride and the groom

will not be separately killed,

for you have an enemy

somewhere, who must be killed.

Therefor forgive the unofficial

entrepreneur who brings

your weapons to your 

school, your office, your

neighborhood theater, bringing

death randomly but needfully,

for his enemies are his

as yours are yours. This is

the way, the truth, and the life.

Wendell Berry

Sabbath Poem XIV, 2012