On joy, and the songs of carrion
Continuing our series on Wendell Berry's Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Hello, friends. Welcome back to my midwinter/early spring series on Wendell Berry’s poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.”
Each week, we’re considering one stanza of this poem, and what it might teach us in this moment. (Read the most recent post here, and read the poem in its entirety here.)
Welcome back, friends. Today, we’re looking at stanza 4 of Berry’s poem—with some of the oddest lines yet:
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Berry continues the previous stanza’s ideas here: he celebrates the achingly slow buildup of humus, the decomposed organic matter (twigs, leaves, insect bodies) that enriches the earth’s soil. As many gardeners know, humans can help the process along by composting leaves, grass clippings and kitchen scraps, but the earth (and its development) moves on its own timeline, which is almost always different from ours.
In the previous stanza, Berry talked about sequoias, which can live for hundreds of years. Now he asks us to imagine - and honor - the accumulation of rich, dark earth at a rate of one inch every five centuries. It boggles the mind, though perhaps not as much as what’s coming next.
Listen to carrion, Berry says. I frankly don’t know what to make of this line, except, perhaps, that we should pay attention to what is dying. What doesn’t flourish in our modern, super-convenient, ultra-fast-paced capitalistic society? If we listen to the “faint chattering,” what do those songs teach us about what we are neglecting, what we might be sad to lose?
I think of the species declared endangered or extinct each year; the loss of monarchs and hummingbirds and whales that were once more abundant than we can imagine. But I think, too, of less tangible losses: wisdom and courage, respect for one’s neighbor, a sense of ourselves as part of this world. These things are not gone, not yet dead, but perhaps they are endangered. We would do well to keep tending them.
Berry’s next declaration can seem either cynical or crazy: Expect the end of the world. And right after that: Laugh. (!) What to make of this juxtaposition?
Expect the end of the world. That seems all too familiar, in the era of climate change, natural disasters, ongoing political chaos, and a pandemic that ended the world for most of us in different ways—sometimes more than once. (My own world has ended a few times by now; I think most people survive a personal apocalypse or two if they live long enough.) It’s hard to say Expect that without also saying, Be afraid. (Or at least, Be prepared.) But Berry urges us to laugh: to approach catastrophe with joy, if we possibly can.
I don’t think he’s calling for flippancy or denial here. After all, Berry has spent three stanzas urging us to counter—deliberately, and with relish—the soulless machinations of this present age. His eyes are wide open, and he doesn’t always like what he’s seeing. So he’s urging us to turn our vision elsewhere: to sequoias and carrion and humus, and to delight in all these things.
Be joyful, Berry urges, though you have considered all the facts.
I wrote a Thanksgiving post on this line several years ago, musing on how difficult it is to choose joy in an age of stress, overwhelm, discouraging headlines, and outer and inner darkness. I could write every line of that post again today. I have since survived storms my 2017 self knew nothing of, and yet I still agree with Berry: choosing joy and hope is no fool’s errand, but a necessary survival strategy.
Berry ends this stanza with some gendered language that admittedly feels strange to me, following his bold, universal declarations. Of course, women—or people of any gender—are not exempt from bad decisions (though many of the worst decisions in the U.S., in this moment, are being made by rich white men who have definitely “gone cheap for power”).
I think he’s really asking something else, though: how will our decisions affect the vulnerable and their nurturers? Will our actions ensure that our children still have a world full of gifts to enjoy? Can we tread lightly enough on the earth to let the mothers and their babies sleep? And, if we are instead operating out of chaos and power and noise, whom does that serve—and is it worthwhile after all?
I confess: this post was a difficult one to write.
That’s partly because I hit mid-series fatigue, wondering if I had anything else to say about Berry’s words, and partly because some of these lines read as opaque or even off-putting. But that’s part of the value of a sacred text: some parts may present difficulty or raise more questions than they answer.
I don’t love Berry’s poem only for its aphorisms, or the advice that’s easy to understand. I love it because it keeps asking me to engage, to consider the world both as it is and as it should be. I love it for its slight madness (it’s right there in the title!), the mischief and wild optimism that urges us to counter the dull sameness of capitalism and profit, to be joyful even if or even so or even then.
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, as always. We’ll be back next week for a discussion of the final stanza, and until then, I wish you joy—and some immeasurable laughter.