journey something

JS favorite Wendell Berry is having some of his poems put on stage! Here’s the story and below is an excerpt from the poem, Some Further Words. Berry’s critique of western progress is staggering. As always, he procures incredible insight with a sort of blunt wisdom that reaches beyond rhetoric and our flimsy presuppositions. 

The world is babbled to pieces after
the divorce of things from their names.
Ceaseless preparation for war
is not peace. Health is not procured
by sale of medication, or purity
by the addition of poison. Science
at the bidding of the corporations
is knowledge reduced to merchandise;
it is a whoredom of the mind,
and so is the art that calls this “progress.”
So is the cowardice that calls it “inevitable.”

 Written decades ago, the poem is incredibly poignant, mystical, and even prophetic:

When I hear the stock market has fallen, 
I say, “Long live gravity! Long live 
stupidity, error and greed in the palaces 
of fantasy capitalism!” I think 
an economy should be based on thrift, 
on taking care of things, not on theft, 
usury, seduction, waste, and ruin. 
My purpose is a language that can make us whole, 
Though mortal, ignorant, and small. 
The world is whole beyond human knowing.

(Painting by Robert Shetterly)