The Country of Marriage by Wendell Berry

from "The Country of Marriage"
   by Wendell Berry

2
This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise 
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing.  And then there rose in me,
like the earth's emopwerin gbrew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed.  I was aa wandereer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful.  Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me.  It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.

4
How many times have I come into you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting, as a man who goes 
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earhward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last

5
Our bond is not little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are --
that puts it in the dark.  We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the know place to which the unknown is always 
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of.  He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen time and gain from the greath strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.