Poem by Wendell Berry--Last Blog Entry (Ever?) on JFK

November 26, 1963

Wendell Berry
The Nation, 21 December 1963, page 437

We know the winter earth upon the body of the young
      President, and the early dark falling;

we know the veins grown quiet in his temples and
      wrists, and his hands and eyes grown quiet;

we know his name written in the black capitals
      of his death, and the mourners standing in the
      rain, and the leaves falling;

we know his death’s horses and drums; the roses, bells,
      candles, crosses; the faces hidden in veils;

we know the children who begin the youth of loss
      greater than they can dream now;

we know the nightlong coming of faces into the candle-
      light before his coffin, and their passing;

we know the mouth of the grave waiting, the bugle and
      rifles, the mourners turning away;

we know the young dead body carried in the earth into
      the first deep night of its absence;

we know our streets and days slowly opening into the
      time he is not alive, filling with our footsteps and
      voices;

we know ourselves, the bearers of the light of the earth
      he is given to, and of the light of all his lost
      days;

we know the long approach of summers toward the
      healed ground where he will be waiting, no longer the
      keeper of what he was.