I. <br /> <br />The poem is important, but <br />not more than the people <br />whose survival it serves, <br /> <br />one of the necessities, so they may <br />speak what is true, and have <br />the patience for beauty: the weighted <br /> <br />grainfield, the shady street, <br />the well-laid stone and the changing tree <br />whose branches spread above. <br /> <br />For want of songs and stories <br />they have dug away the soil, <br />paved over what is left, <br /> <br />set up their perfunctory walls <br />in tribute to no god, <br />for the love of no man or woman, <br /> <br />so that the good that was here <br />cannot be called back <br />except by long waiting, by great <br /> <br />sorrows remembered and to come <br />by invoking the thunderstones <br />of the world, and the vivid air. <br /> <br />II. <br /> <br />The poem is important, <br />as the want of it <br />proves. It is the stewardship <br /> <br />of its own possibility, <br />the past remembering itself <br />in the presence of <br /> <br />the present, the power learned <br />and handed down to see <br />what is present <br /> <br />and what is not: the pavement <br />laid down and walked over <br />regardlessly--by exiles, here <br /> <br />only because they are passing. <br />Oh, remember the oaks that were <br />here, the leaves, purple and brown, <br /> <br />falling, the nuthatches walking <br />headfirst down the trunks, <br />crying "onc! onc!" in the brightness <br /> <br />as they are doing now <br />in the cemetery across the street <br />where the past and the dead <br /> <br />keep each other. To remember, <br />to hear and remember, is to stop <br />and walk on again <br /> <br />to a livelier, surer measure. <br />It is dangerous <br />to remember the past only <br /> <br />for its own sake, dangerous <br />to deliver a message <br />you did not get.<br /><br />Wendell Berry<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-a-motel-parking-lot-thinking-of-dr-williams/
