Words
1.
What is one to make of a life given
to putting things into words,
saying them, writing them down?
Is there a world beyond words?
There is. But don’t start, don’t
go on about the tree unqualified,
standing in light that shines
to time’s end beyond its summoning
name. Don’t praise the speechless
starlight, the unspeakable dawn.
Just stop.
2.
Well, we can stop,
for a while, if we try hard enough,
if we are lucky. We can sit still,
keep silent, let the phoebe, the sycamore,
the river, the stone call themselves
by whatever they call themselves, their own
sounds, their own silences; and thus
may know for a moment the nearness
of the world, its vastness,
its vast variousness, far and near,
which only silence knows. And then
we must call all things by name
out of the silence again to be with us,
or die of namelessness.
by Wendell Berry
