The Calling of All Creatures is Design

From Wendell Berry’s This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems —

To long for what can be fulfilled in time
Foredooms the body to the use of light,
Light into light returning, as the stream

Of days flows downward through us into night,
And into light and life and time to come.
This is the way of death: loss of what might

Have been in what must come to be, light's sum
Lost in the having, having to forego.
The year drives on toward what it will become.

In answer to their names called long ago
The creatures all have risen and replied
Year after year, each toward the distant glow

Of its perfection in all, glorified;
Have failed. Year after year they all disperse
As the leaves fall, and not to be denied

The frost falls on the grass as by a curse.
The leaves flame, fall, and carry down their light
By a hard justice in the universe

Against all fragmentary things. Their flight
Sends them downward into the dark, unseen
Empowerment of a universal right

That brings them back to air and light again,
One grand motion, implacable, sublime.
The calling of all creatures is design.