2000
I

In the world forever one
With the informing Love
That gives its life to time,

In the day of alchemy,
Come round at last, transmuting
Corruption to pollution,
Transmuting lies to blindness,
And light to dark, the known
Destroyed in our unknowing,

Under the sun that shines
Beyond evil and good,
The goldeneye alights

On the cold river. Grace
Unasked, merely allowed,
Gleams round him on the water.

2000
III

As timely as a river
God's timeless life passes
Into this world. It passes
Through bodies, giving life,
And past them, giving death.
The secret fish leaps up
Into the light and is
Again darkened. The sun
Comes from the dark, it lights
The always passing river,
Shines on the great-branched tree
And goes. Longing and dark,
We are completely filled
With breath of love, in us
Forever incomplete.

from: "Sabbath Poems 1998-2004," in Wendell Berry, Given: new poems. (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2005).