The Farmer, Speaking of Monuments

Always, on their generation's breaking wave,
men think to be immortal in the world,
as though to leap from water and stand
in air were simple for a man.  But the farmer
knows no work or act of his can keep him
here.  He remains in what he serves
by vanishing in it, becoming what he never was.
He will not be immortal in words.
All his sentences serve an art of the commonplace,
to open the body of a woman or a field
to take him in.  His words all turn
to leaves, answering the sun with mute 
quick reflections.  Leaving their seed, his hands
have a million graves, from which wonders
rose, bearing him no likeness.  At summer's
height he is surrounded by green, his 
doing, standing for him, awake and orderly.
In autumn, all his monuments fall.

                                              -Wendell Berry