A Sabbath Reflection

August 30, 2015 Maggie Danaher

To long for what can be fulfilled in time Foredooms the body to the use of light, Light into light returning, as the stream Of days flows downward through us into night, And into light and life and time to come. This is the way of death: loss of what might Have been in what must come to be, light's sum Lost in the having, having to forego. The year drives on toward what it will become. In answer to their names called long ago The creatures all have risen and replied Year after year, each toward the distant glow Of its perfection in all, glorified; Have failed. Year after year they all disperse As the leaves fall, and not to be denied The frost falls on the grass as by a curse. The leaves flame, fall, and carry down their light By a hard justice in the universe Against all fragmentary tings. Their flight Sends them downward into the dark, unseen Empowerment of a universal right That brings them back to air and light again, One grand motion, implacable, sublime. The calling of all creatures is design We long for what can be fulfilled in time, Though death is in the cost. There is a craving As in delayed completion of a rhyme To know what may be had by loss of having, To see what loss of time will make of seed In earth or womb, dark come to light, the saving Of what was lost in what will come - repaid In the invisible pattern that will mark Whatever of the passing light is made Choosing the light in which the sun is dark, The stars dark, and all mortal vision blind - That puts us out of thought and out of work, And dark by day, in heart dark, dark in mind, Mistaking for a song our lonely cry, We turn in wrongs of love against our kind; The fall returns. Our deeds and days gone by Take root, bear fruit, are carried on, in faith Or fault, through deaths all mortal things must die, The deaths of time and pain, and death's own death In full-filled light and song, final Sabbath.

Sabbath Poem XI (1979) Wendell Berry