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The Fearfulness of Hands That Have Learned Killing (audio only)

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Wendell Berry
1934 –

Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.

Wendell Berry
Photo credit: Dan Carraco

Poet, essayist, farmer, and novelist Wendell Berry is the author of more than thirty books.

About Wendell Berry

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More by this poet

The Dance

I would have each couple turn,
join and unjoin, be lost
in the greater turning
of other couples, woven
in the circle of a dance,
the song of long time flowing

over them, so they may return,
turn again in to themselves
out of desire greater than their own,
belonging to all, to each,
to the dance, and to the song
that moves them through the night.

What is fidelity? To what
does it hold? The point
of departure, or the turning road
that is departure and absence
and the way home? What we are
and what we were once

Wendell Berry
2016

2008, XII

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…

Hosea 4:6

Wendell Berry
2016

Kentucky River Junction

to Ken Kesey & Ken Babbs

Clumsy at first, fitting together

the years we have been apart,

and the ways.

But as the night

passed and the day came, the first

fine morning of April,

it came clear:

the world that has tried us

and showed us its joy

was our bond

when we said nothing.

And we allowed it to be

with us, the new green

shining.

          *

Our lives, half gone,

stay full of laughter.

Wendell Berry
1985

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