Wendell Berry: "I" ["No, no, there is no going back"]

No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

that possibility you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you.

You have become a sort of grave

containing much that was

and is no more in time, beloved

then, now, and always.

And so you have become a sort of tree

standing over the grave.

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young, to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unaging in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away.

"I" ["No, no, there is no going back"] (from 1993) by Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997. © Counterpoint, 1999.  

Photography credit: "Grave Under Tree," by Stephanie L. Nicholas, 2012 (originally black and white).