Poem for J

What she made in her body is broken.

Now she has begun to bear it again.

In the house of her son’s death

his life is shining in the windows,

for she has elected to bear him again.

She did not bear him for death,

and she does not.  She has taken back

into her body the seed, bitter

and joyous, of the life of a man.

In the house of the dead the windows shine

with life.  She mourns, for his life was good.

She is not afraid.  She is like a field

where the corn is planted, and like the rain

that waters the field, and like the young corn.

In her sorrow she renews life, in her grief

she prepares the return of joy.

She did not bear him for death, and she does not.

There was a life that went out of her to live

on its own, divided, and now she has taken it back.

She is alight with the sudden new life of death.

Perhaps it is the brightness of the dead one

being born again.  Perhaps she is planting him,

like corn, in the living and in the earth.

She has taken back into her flesh,

and made light, the dark seed of her pain. 

Wendell Berry, A Country of Marriage