Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Monday, July 27th, 2020.

Today's poem is by Wendell Berry. He was born August 5th, 1934. And of course, he is an American

novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. He's a highly decorated

and beloved poet. And given that his birthday is August 5th, and that means that his

86th birthday is coming up, I wanted to share a poem today by him. And then also I'll probably

share a couple more around the days of his birthday. So you're in for some Wendell Berry over the

next couple weeks. I hope that's okay. The poem that I'm going to be sharing with you today is called Early in the

Year by my friend's gift. We included this poem in our book, 30 Poems to Memorize Before It's Too Late,

which is out now. You can get it from surcey institute.com slash 30 poems or on Amazon. And we included this because this is a great poem, a very

interesting poem to memorize and thus is a great poem to contemplate. I've never read this one on

the show, so I wanted to go ahead and share it with you. I'm going to share with you some comments

that were included in the book by Jeffrey Bilbra, who's a great, great literary critic and professor. So here is early in the book by Jeffrey Bilbra, who's a great, a great literary critic and professor.

So here is,

early in the year by my friend's gift by Wendell Berry.

Begins with this quote,

Why seek ye the living among the dead?

Early in the year, by my friend's gift, I saw at Santa Polcro-Piero's vision,

the soldiers who guard the dead from the living themselves become as dead men, one tumbling dazily backward.

Awake, his wounds bleeding still, his foot upon the tomb,

Christ, too bore our life to its most wretched end,

having thrust off like a blanket the heavy lid, stands.

But for his face and countenance, I have found no words, powerful beyond life and death, seeing

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