THE QUESTION

Carolina Wren

                                        The question before me, now that I

                                        am old, is not how to be dead,

                                        which I know from enough practice,

                                        but how to be alive, as these worn

                                        hills still tell, and some paintings 

                                        of Paul Cezanne, and this mere 

                                        singing wren, who thinks he's alive

                                        forever, this instant, and may be.

 Wendell Berry

Sabbath Poems 2001, VIII