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    Water at the Roots: Poems and Insights of a Visionary Farmer
    Water at the Roots: Poems and Insights of a Visionary Farmer
    Water at the Roots: Poems and Insights of a Visionary Farmer
    Ebook160 pages3 hours

    Water at the Roots: Poems and Insights of a Visionary Farmer

    By Philip Britts and David Kline

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    About this ebook

    In a society uprooted by two world wars, industrialization, and dehumanizing technology, a revolutionary farmer turns to poetry to reconnect his people to the land and one another.

    A farmer, poet, activist, pastor, and mystic, Britts (1917–1949) has been called a British Wendell Berry. His story is no romantic agrarian elegy, but a life lived in the thick of history. As his country plunged headlong into World War II, he joined an international pacifist community, the Bruderhof, and was soon forced to leave Europe for South America.

    Amidst these great upheavals, his response – to root himself in faith, to dedicate himself to building community, to restore the land he farmed, and to use his gift with words to turn people from their madness – speaks forcefully into our time. In an age still wracked by racism, nationalism, materialism, and ecological devastation, the life he chose and the poetry he composed remain a prophetic challenge.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPlough Publishing House
    Release dateMar 20, 2018
    ISBN9780874861297
    Water at the Roots: Poems and Insights of a Visionary Farmer
    Author

    Philip Britts

    Farmer-poet Philip Britts was born in 1917 in Devon, England. Britts became a pacifist, joined the Bruderhof, and during World War II moved to South America. There, in 1949, he died of a rare tropical illness at the age of 31, leaving his wife, Joan, with three young children and fourth on the way.

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      Book preview

      Water at the Roots - Philip Britts

      Bristol, England, city center, 1920s

      WILDERNESS

      ——

      CHAPTER 1

      ——

      Look up to see if the God I serve has seen

      The town of Honiton, in Devon, southwest England, is surrounded by rich farmland. The River Otter flows nearby, leading down to the sea some ten miles to the south. Footpaths trace their way through the countryside. Here Philip Herbert Cootes Britts was born on April 17, 1917, and it was here that his lifelong love of farming and nature, hiking and camping, poetry and song first took root.

      By the time he was four, though, his family had moved to a suburb of Bristol, a busy port city famed equally for its cathedral and its urban poverty. Here, his sister Molly was born.

      Most of Philip’s childhood memories were centred on Bristol, which was plagued by crime and unrest at the time, but from early on he preferred the countryside.

      Philip went to grammar school and then looked for any kind of work to earn money for his university studies. He worked in a quarry, then took care of a wealthy man’s orchid house. Later in life, Philip would tell stories about his escapades during these years. One ended in a major motorcycle accident that proved to be a turning point in his life.

      Little more is known of his early life, but his earliest poems give a window into his thoughts.

      ALONE

      When the night is cold and the winds complain,

      And the pine trees sigh for the coming rain,

      I will light a lonely watch-fire, near by a lonely wood,

      And look up to see if the God I serve has seen and understood.

      I’ll watch the wood-ash whitened by the licking yellow tongues,

      I’ll watch the wood-smoke rising, sweet smoke that stings the lungs,

      See the leaping, laughing watch-fire throw shadows on the grass,

      See the rushes bend and tremble to let the shadows pass,

      While my soul flies through the forest, back a trail of weary years,

      And the clouds, as if in pity, shed their tears.

      Oh, I do not want their pity for a trail that’s closed behind,

      Though all the things on earth combine to play upon the mind.

      I must keep on riding forward to a goal I’ll never find –

      What matter the eyes have seen so much that the soul is colour-blind?

      1934

      It’s not difficult to see the influence of the popular poets of the day – William Butler Yeats, John Masefield, A. E. Housman – on the young Philip’s work.

      I SENT MY SOUL SEARCHING

      I sent my soul searching the songs of the ages,

      The hearts of all poets were bared to my eyes,

      Though I read golden thoughts as I turned golden pages

      The echoes fell faint as of songs that were sighs.

      I weighed up the greatness of all who were greatest

      Whom the world had called strong and the world had called wise,

      But the song that they sang from the first to the latest

      Fell back from the portals of thy Paradise.

      1934

      Am I dreaming this wilderness?

      Philip’s spiritual search did not cut him off from the political and social drama of his time and place. Rather, his questions thrust him into the heart of things. The 1930s were turbulent years for Europe and beyond, years of uncertainty and disillusionment. Socialism and a strong peace movement in England held promise, but rumours from Russia soon cast shadows on communism, and economic meltdown on the West’s own grand visions of humankind’s continuous progress.

      This suffering soon struck close to Philip. Not far from Bristol, on the other side of the River Severn estuary, are the coal-mining valleys of South Wales. These valleys were hard hit during the Great Depression. There were hunger marches from 1922 to 1936, some nationwide, some local, to appeal to the government for help. In 1931 a hunger march of 112 people – many from the Rhondda Valley – marched to Bristol, their slogan Struggle or starve. The demonstration was broken up by mounted police.

      WORKING IN A CITY

      There are so many songs that need to be sung.

      There are so many beautiful things that await

      The sensitive hand to pick them up

      From this strange din of busy living.

      I hear an echo in my sleep,

      But I, caught up in the tide, like the rest,

      Must spend all my life for the means to live:

      I starve if I stop to sing–

      Yet this dull

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