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Showing posts from February, 2007

An Elegy

by Wendell Berry I stand at the cistern in front of the old barn in the darkness, in the dead of winter, night strangely warm, the wind blowing, rattling an unlatched door. I draw the cold water up out of the ground, and drink. At the house the light is still waiting. An old man I've loved all my life is dying in his bed there. He is going slowly down from himself. In final obedience to his life, he follows his body out of our knowing. his hands, quiet on the sheet, keep a painful resemblance to what they no longer are.