This is a much more prophetically edged poem than many in the Sabbath collection. The poet is compelled to interrogate his own values and motives as a poet, as a citizen, and as a human being capable of moral discernment and ethical protest.
One of the reasons I admire and return to Wendell Berry's writing is precisely that unerring instinct for naming what is going wrong in a culture, and pointing to legitimate response. This poem was written the year the Allied coalition invaded Iraq in the so called "War on Terror". The justifications offered for those long years of conflict,with countless civilian casualties and the destabilisation of several nation states in a volatile region, have proven to be less than valid; the conflict itself still unsettled, and a road map to peace still uncharted.
Berry went to the heart of the matter; the eclipse of truth by political, economic and military powers that hijack words and monopolise media. And his response was to envision a world where however rich, powerful and entitled those powers might feel themselves to be, protest was then, and is now, a moral and spiritual imperative.
So Wendell Berry, one of our finest poets and novelists wrote a Sabbath poem about the power of silence. Not passive silence, but a deliberate self-imposed absence of words as a symbol of freedom. Against those who would restrict the freedom of speech of writers and musicians and painters, Berry claims on behalf of a true patriotism the freedom of silence; by which he means the refusal of the poet to allow his words, the refusal of the musician to allow their songs and music, the refusal of artists to allow their painting, to be enjoyed and co-opted by those who have hijacked the deepest freedoms of the human spirit.
Berry is aware that the high arts have profound formative power for the nation, the land and the people. So they must never be prostituted in the interests of political manipulation and propaganda. Patriotic duty sometimes requires persons and a people to resist, protest, say no to what we are being told is our patriotic duty. The core values of that duty can never be dictated by a party, a political leader, or a movement.
The poet's point has wider application than the time and place this poem was written. Only a few days ago, The Rolling Stones went to Court to prevent their music being used at Trump Rallies. A rock group is refusing to allow their music to be co-opted for other ends, because they know the deep resonances, motivational and associational power of music, lyrics and concerted focus.
The freedom of silence is a revolutionary act of non-alignment and non-compliance with the powers that be. The refusal of the poet to validate the practice of word devaluation; the refusal of musicians to have their music exploited in the interests of the powerful; the refusal of artists to allow image to be used as a way of distorting meaning and manipulating reason, emotion and conscience. These are revolutionary acts that are statements of freedom.
Sabbath Poem VII 2003
When they cannot speak freely in defiance
of wealth self-elected to righteousness,
let the arts of pleasure and beauty cease.
Let every poet and singer of joy be dumb.
When those in power by owning all the words
have made them mean nothing, let silence
speak for us. When freedom’s light goes out, let colour
drain from all paintings into gray puddles
One the museum floor. When every ear awaits only
The knock on the door in the dark midnight,
Let all the orchestras sound just one long note of woe
……..
All that patriotism requires, and all that it can be,
is eagerness to maintain intact and incorrupt
the founding principles of the nation, and to preserve
undiminished the land and the people. If national conduct
forsakes these aims, it is one’s patriotic duty
to say so and oppose. What else have we to live for?
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