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Photo of Wendell Berry

Berry, Wendell

An American novelist, essayist, poet, professor, cultural critic and farmer.. American man of letters academic cultural and economic critic and farmer

Email Poem - The Wish to be GenerousEmail Poem

The Wish to be Generous

 ALL that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.



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