always in the distance…

1988 “V” from Wendell Berry

Always in the distance
the sound of cars is passing
on the road, that simplest form
going only two ways, both ways
away. And I have been there in that going.

But now I rest and am
apart, a part of the form
of the woods always arriving
from all directions home,
this cell of wild sound,
the hush of the trees, singers
hidden among the leaves —

a form whose history is old,
needful, unknown, and bright
as the history of the stars
that tremble in the sky at night
like leaves of a great tree.

(for “I”, from 1988, see here; and for “II”, from 1988, see here; and for “III”, from 1988, see here; and for “IV”, see here)