Sometimes, I hear a poem being read, and one line from it grabs my attention.  I think, "Wait...what?"  I return to the poem and read it to myself, to get the context for that one line. I find that the setting of that one line is even more intriguing.  

Today, I heard Garrison Keillor read Wendell Berry's "The Want of Peace" and that one line was, "We sell the world to buy fire..."  And a name came to mind--Prometheus. For it was Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man.  The name connotes art, science, and technology.  It brings to mind another name, Frankenstein--the new Prometheus.  And, to me, this name connotes scientific hubris.  And my mind bends toward the darkness of industrialized war and murder.

"All goes back to the earth..." And so I seek to learn from the silence of tangled roots, their hold held by the dark earth. I yearn for the baptisms of rivers, to receive their saving grace.

The Want of Peace
by Wendell Berry

All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman’s silence
receiving the river’s grace,
the gardner’s musing on rows.

I lack the peace of simple things.
I am never wholly in place.
I find no peace or grace.
We sell the world to buy fire,
our way lighted by burning men,
and that has bent my mind
and made me think of darkness
and wish for the dumb life of roots.

From New Collected Poems, Counterpoint Press, 2012.