The Primal Sabbath’s Hymn

Praise Yahweh from the earth…mountains, and all hills…Hallelujah! (Psalm 148)

A poem.

What stood will stand, though all be fallen,
The good return that time has stolen.
Though creatures groan in misery,
Their flesh prefigures liberty
To end travail and bring to birth
Their new perfection in new earth.
At word of that enlivening
Let the trees of the woods all sing
And every field rejoice, let praise
Rise up out of the ground like grass.
What stood, whole in every piecemeal
Thing that stood, will stand though all
Fall — field and woods and all in them
Rejoin the primal Sabbath's hymn.

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