A Sabbath Poem (Berry)

We Who Prayed and Wept
— Wendell Berry

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and yoke of liberty
accept the tyanny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.

This poem is a part of a series that comes from the book “Earth Prayers,” a collection of daily earth honoring poems and prayers