Undone Entirely

He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity in their hearts, but no one can discover the work God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

A Sabbath day poem

How many have relinquished
Breath, in grief or rage,
The victor and the vanquished
Named on the bitter page

Alike, or indifferently
Forgot— all that they did
Undone entirely.
The dust they stirred has hid

Their faces and their works,
Has settled, and lies still.
Nobody rests or shirks
Who must turn in time's mill.

They wind the turns of the mill
In house and field and town;
As grist is ground to meal
The grinders are ground down.

— from This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems, by Wendell Berry.