This month I'm posting
daily Poetry-Music Match-Ups, and you're invited to join me!
(See the bottom* of the
post for ideas.) When I don't have a
crowd-sourced combo
scheduled, I'll share one
of my own many, many PMMUs! If something comes to your
mind, send it to me HERE.
Today the exquisite
new green of the trees against our blue, blue Maryland sky put me in mind of
this poem, even as I heard on the radio about the Pacific “ring of fire” and not one but two
places on earth quaked to pieces.
When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief. I come into the presence of still water.And I feel above me the day-blind starswaiting with their light. For a timeI rest in the grace of the world, and am free.from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998.Source: Collected Poems 1957-1982 (Counterpoint Press, 1985)
I’ve heard this musical setting (by Malcolm Dalglish) a number of
times and even sung it myself—curious to consider how a composer deals with a
free verse poem like this one, when music wants so often to be patterned and
cycled and symmetrical. There are several different compositions for "The Peace of Wild Things"; everybody wants to feel that, I guess.
performed by The Starry Mountain Singers
One of my favorite poems. I came across a Berry quote today in a restaurant. It's been a Berry good day.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by, Diane! Yes, a Berry good day.
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