Today is Independence Day in the United States, and to mark the day, we would like to offer you a different perspective on freedom from Wendell Berry.
Below, you can hear Wendell Berry read the poem with animation by Charlotte Ager, as part of the OnBeing “Poetry Films” series.
by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.