One July day in 1997, while sneezing my way up the musty steps to the “bargain attic” of Poor Richard’s Book Store in Frankfort, Kentucky, I saw a framed page on the wall, in what appeared to be hand-set type; perhaps a product of Kentucky’s Larkspur Press.
At first glance, I took the text to be that of a translation of an obscure Chinese poem that I would likely never see anywhere else. The words were beautiful. I hastily scribbled them down on a business card.
Coming to the end of the poem, I saw that it was an original by Kentucky poet Wendell Berry, evidently about the ink and scroll painting shown above, by Ming Dynasty painter Shen Zhou (or Chou). I’ve never found the poem anywhere else, but luckily thought to transfer my business-card scribble into a journal I was keeping at the time. The original of the painting is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Here’s the text:
Young
We had not enough respect for the changing moon.
Then the days seemed to pass only to return again.
Now
Having learned by loss that men’s days part from them forever,
We eat and drink together beneath the full moon
Acknowledging and celebrating the power that bereft us
And yet sheds over the earth a light that is beautiful.
–Wendell Berry, After the Painting and Poem by Shen Chou
I hope putting this poem here will help me keep up with it. The business card upon which I transcribed it has long ago been lost, and I often lose track of the journal in which I recopied the scribblings from the business card.
