A Word Fitly Spoken

Sabbaths, 2007

V.

Those who use the world assuming
their knowledge is sufficient
destroy the world. The forest
is mangled for the sale
of a few sticks, or is bulldozed
into a stream and covered over
with the earth it once stood
upon. The stream turns foul,
killing the creatures that once
lived from it. Industrial humanity,
an alien species, lives by death.
In the clutter of facts, the destroyers
leave behind them one big story,
of the world and the world's end,
that they don't know. They know
names and little stories. But the names
of everything are not everything.
The story of everything, told,
is only a little story. They don't know
the languages of the birds
who pass northward, feeding
through the treetops early
in May, kept alive by knowledge
never to be said in words.
Hang down your head. This
is our hope: Words emerge
from silence, the silence remains.

~ Wendell Berry, Leavings