How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)

i  

Make a place to sit down.  

Sit down. Be quiet.  

You must depend upon  

affection, reading, knowledge,  

skill—more of each  

than you have—inspiration,  

work, growing older, patience,  

for patience joins time  

to eternity. Any readers  

who like your poems,  

doubt their judgment.  

ii  

Breathe with unconditional breath  

the unconditioned air.  

Shun electric wire.  

Communicate slowly. Live  

a three-dimensioned life;  

stay away from screens.  

Stay away from anything  

that obscures the place it is in.  

There are no unsacred places;  

there are only sacred places  

and desecrated places.  

iii  

Accept what comes from silence.  

Make the best you can of it.  

Of the little words that come  

out of the silence, like prayers  

prayed back to the one who prays,  

make a poem that does not disturb  

the silence from which it came.

—Wendell Berry