Poem: Do Not Be Ashamed

Wendell Berry’s poem “Do Not Be Ashamed” is both illustrative and didactic. It speaks to the experience of the socially rejected and disenfranchised, individuals whose lack of conformity, whose very identity is questioned. Against this bleak procrustean scenario, Berry offers that belief in oneself, truth, radical honesty, and determination overcome the malicious forces that seek to destroy us as unique individuals, ending the poem with a calmly breaking day.

Transcript

Do not be ashamed.

You will be walking some night in the comfortable dark of your yard and suddenly a great light will shine round about you and behind you will be a wall you never saw before.

It will be clear to you suddenly that you are about to escape and that you are guilty.

You misread the complex instructions.

You are not a member.

You lost your card or never had one and you will know that they have been there all along.

Their eyes on your letters and books,

Their hands in your pockets,

Their ears wired to your bed.

Though you have done nothing shameful,

They will want you to be ashamed.

They will want you to kneel and weep and say that you should have been like them and once you say that you are ashamed,

Reading the page they hold out to you,

Then such light as you have made in your history will leave you.

They will no longer need to pursue you.

You will pursue them begging forgiveness and they will not forgive you.

There is no power against them.

It is only candour that is aloof from them.

Only an inward clarity unashamed that they cannot reach.

Be ready.

When their light has picked you out and their questions are asked say to them,

I am not ashamed.

A sure horizon will come around you.

The heaven will rise in his evening flight from the hilltop.

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