<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">A Speech To The Garden Club Of America</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><i style="font-size: 14px;" class="">(With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)</i></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">There are so many outcomes that are worse.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">But I must add I’m sorry for getting here</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">By a sustained explosion through the air,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Burning the world in fact to rise much higher</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Than we should go. The world may end in fire</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">As prophesied—our world! We speak of it</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Of temporary progress, digging up</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">An antique dark-held luster to corrupt</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">The present light with smokes and smudges, poison</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">To outlast time and shatter comprehension.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Burning the world to live in it is wrong,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">As wrong as to make war to get along</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">And be at peace, to falsify the land</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">By sciences of greed, or by demand</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">But why not play it cool? Why not survive</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">By going back to school, this time in gardens</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">That burn no hotter than the summer day.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">By goods that bind us to all living things,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">A creature of the surface, like ourselves,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">The garden lives by the immortal Wheel</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">That turns in place, year after year, to heal</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">It whole. Unlike our economic pyre</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">An anti-life of radiance and fume</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">That burns as power and remains as doom,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">The garden delves no deeper than its roots</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class="">And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> - Wendell Berry</div></div></body></html>