I love this poem. I wish many of our politicians would read it, and think about how they use language and words, and reflect on the importance of truth, trust and integrity in who we are and how we conduct our lives.
(From 'The Book of Camp Branch', Wendell Berry, in This Day. Collected and New Sabbath Poems, 287-288.
A sounding stone,
a stopping stone,
a word
that is a sounding and a stepping
stone.
A language that is a stream flowing
and is a man’s thoughts as he
walks and thinks beside a stream.
His thoughts will hold
if the words will hold, if each
is a weight-bearing stone
placed by the flow
in the flow. The language too
descends through time, subserving
false economy, heedless power,
blown with the gas of salesmanship,
rattled with the sale of a needless war,
worn by the mere unhearing
babble of thoughtlessness,
and must return to its own
downward flow by the flowing
water, the muttered syllables,
the measureless music, the stream
flowing and singing, the man
walking and thinking, balanced
on unsure footholds
in the flowing stream.
(Photo from a favourite bridge and a slow flowing stream – or burn as we call it in Scotland.)
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