The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  perceived the evidence, raked it

  460up, sorted through it, the recurrent

  from the fortuitous, meanwhile casting

  out the merely repetitious, bundled

  sortings up, clumped certain ones into

  bags, tied strings around the bags,

  465heaved the whole business up on your

  shoulders and jostled around till

  you’ve found the balance point in

  it—what an amazement

  as you stand there searching stillness,

  470not yet having decided where to go

  with it all, if anywhere, to realize

  that the balance, the point of

  balance, is a found piece of permanence

  in the disposition of things (look how

  475many of’s), a still place, primordial

  form, and that every shiftless thing

  it took to find

  the point is mere change’s shifting

  23

  slice thirty degrees off the summer

  480summit eighty and the windy ridge

  that’s left can change your summer

  clothes: it’s April and

  glory is still uncertain and death

  not:

  485the air is so clear and the

  sky fine blue this morning,

  small showers having given

  fringes to the front coming

  through last night:

  490a V of about forty geese, late,

  and working nearly into the NW

  wind, struggled through, haggling:

  I’ve seen geese that waited early

  for the right high wind go over

  495like they were skating, the wings’

  strokes covering apparent distances

  (real distances, but not real air

  distances) only gliding could acct for

  24

  last year we got this strawberry

  500jar, a ceramic bulge-bellied vase with open

  ears all around it and a strawberry plant

  growing in each ear: winter came and I

  put the affliction in the garage where

  naturally the temperature fell below

  505zero, though sometime during the day

  the window found a ray that caught

  the jar (not warming it much): the leaves,

  cold-scorched quickly dead, remained green

  all winter but when put out this

  510spring turned burnt brown, you can just

  imagine:

  this story is too short for a long

  story and too long for a short story:

  anyway, today I observed two green serrated

  515feelers oozing up into each of two ears

  and thought to my self “my word”

  the plants didn’t die: by then, that is

  by this morning, since I had thought the

  plants dead and stopped watering them,

  520the jar was shrunk dry: so I went to

  get the plastic wateringcan that has

  been sitting all winter under the outside

  faucet catching, since thaw, drops: leaks:

  I noticed last fall’s leaves in the

  525can and thought well that will improve

  the juice but I thought it did smell

  funny: I poured water into the jar-top

  and most of it, drought-refused, ran over or

  out: so I waited for the soak to take and

  530began to think something really

  smelled: I poured some more rich brown

  juice into the jar and then upended

  the can to let the leaves fall out and

  out plunked this animal clothed in

  535leaves so I couldn’t tell what he was

  except his thick tail looked thicker

  than a rat’s: mercy: I’d just had

  lunch: squooshy ice cream: I nearly

  unhad it: I expect the crows will come

  540and peck it up, up, and away, the way

  they do squirrels killed on the

  streets: pulling at the long, small

  intestines and getting a toehold on

  small limbs to tear off the big flesh

  25

  545the rat was a mole: the arctic air

  yesterday afternoon dried him out and

  the freeze last night stiffened him much

  reduced in size and scent: so

  I broke out the shovel, dug up a

  550spade, dumped in the mole: there let

  him rot, the rat: I can see how

  something blind could get into my

  wateringcan: but with those feet!

  I can hear him scratching up the side:

  555to get in, or out: but also I can hear him

  sloshing, the blind water darkened by

  night, till nobody came

  26

  there is something about

  a redbird flying down

  560into

  the brook bed, the stone-deep ditch,

  and lighting on a washed-out root,

  the brook meanwhile throwing mirrors

  everywhere—light, mirror, bird, stone

  27

  565I like, as I have said before,

  maximum implication and

  registration of fact and tension before

  integration catches on as to how

  _________

  it is to work and the point it

  570catches on to the finish what a war

  between what will and will not be

  captured by design, bent to a larger

  rule, made to serve, expand, elaborate:

  it is not right until the design

  575at once insists on itself and accommodates

  itself to the material all the way out

  to the tricky coincidental! for if

  the central, controlling design will

  not submit to the chippy alteration of

  580the surprising appearance, the fortuitous

  bit, its control will be perfect, a

  nonplace, emptiness: but the integration

  that tests itself, adjusting, sorting,

  out to the limit why it holds because

  585there is nothing to loosen it, garrisons

  and amassings of questioning having

  meanwhile overturned the perfect

  28

  it doesn’t matter to me if issues

  overload a line:

  590or if real poetry shrugs shucking

  bugs of small intentions

  off the shoulders of its purer

  streams—what the fuck—everybody

  has to eat, nature overfilling

  595everything to fill it:

  yesterday was one day, today is

  another, tomorrow still one more:

  the creeps:

  the sun is bright but can never

  600squint fine enough to count time

  by my span:

  it is unavailing: everyone knows

  that when we die we wake up

  elsewhere from the dream life into

  605life, hop over a fence and

  walk off across nobody’s pasture

  29

  I wake from a nap

  in a room I have worked

  so many hours and years

  610in, made long poems &

  dinky ones in, read and

  answered letters and

  thrown some out unread

  or unsent and I cannot

  615remember ever having been

  here before, this place,

  the woods

  out the window, what does

  it mean, and then I recall

  620a trace, but nothing I

  couldn’t throw away, and

  that trace fits with a

  recent time that blocks

  out into fullness of

  625being and then the walls
/>
  settle, the house

  takes disposition

  with the street, the

  town, oh, yes, the lake, ridges,

  630I yawn a couple of times

  and pick up the latest

  thing to do

  30

  words cast up

  to see if light

  635will pick anything out in them

  like sand and trash

  a winnowing:

  though I cast up true

  words as far as I know

  640(words that truly

  occur) I cannot be

  held wrong when I range

  into winnowing chaff,

  truly chaff: I am

  645seeing: I am looking to make

  arrangements: is the land

  rich, are the children

  well, the mind, is it

  well-stocked and with what,

  650fish: has a grain

  of hope or grain been

  found: is there, going

  this way or that, any

  increase in increase or

  655any falling off: is, at

  this time, any direction

  worth finding: I said

  the words in the time

  of themselves: I said the

  _________

  660words as truly as I could

  say them, according to

  themselves: the words

  are not responsible: they

  are not the truth: they

  665caught the swerve, they

  revealed the glint: the

  mind opens—it is so

  delightful, glaring—many

  times before it finds a

  670room worth finding:

  but chaff will show

  you “which way the wind

  blows” truly: my words

  are, of course, chaff

  675as assertions are:

  but the motions: as

  the wind blows, so blows

  the world: in the

  innerwork of the

  680motions one reads what will

  be aright and turns here or

  there as he can (ashcan) to get

  away or be there with it:

  I speak to show not

  685the substance but

  the curvature of the going

  the substance may change often

  but the curvature has a glacial

  pace, seeming, to tell the truth,

  _________

  690out of kilter with substance:

  but probably, though we can’t

  wait too long to see, it comes

  out right eventually

  31

  I was this

  695morning affrighted past loafing

  by the small blood

  lining the squirrel’s mouth

  where he lay on the highway’s edge

  his legs spraddled stiff into space

  700the high eye full of the morning sun

  the other

  scrinching wide open on grainy macadam

  oh, me, I said, myself affected, cars

  are our worst predators

  705getting more

  than crows can hawk (hocking &

  spitting) into shreds even

  (though it’s good

  that some things clear things away—

  710in the old caves

  dying men

  shoved into backroom fissures, split trenches,

  found quickened way to rigid ease)

  a young couple bicycling came up the

  715hill past the squirrel and though the

  girl’s eyes cast it a slight shake

  her talk didn’t break and they went on

  by with the tribute of being glad to get

  by:

  the car itself, the kill recent, had

  gone on, notifying no one—why notify,

  or how, a different species: we never

  tell mules we’re dead, though they say

  Uncle Asa’s great-horned owl knew the

  725afternoon, changing, he died because his

  hooting skirled or whatever and he

  wouldn’t stop moaning, the thriving

  throat croak, and dogs out under the

  lean-to’s of barns know when their

  730masters lie dying

  32

  today Jerry, Fran, Phyllis and I went

  to see the high farm out by Mecklenberg:

  the farm starts high and keeps getting

  higher: the brook runs way up and

  735on the way is the low pond but further

  up, the larger high pond and then

  there are a couple of fields of

  ascension and then the old woods of

  the ridge, precipitous in climb, not

  740available to hassling lumbermen:

  along the ridge is a long march

  you don’t have to sweat once you’re

  there: wild turkey, deer, grouse

  inhabit the inaccessibilities and make

  745do: I would buy a whole 130-acre farm

  for one hermit lark, his song,

  especially his song at evening by a

  pond: right now there are some shabby

  sheep, eight cocks (henless): I heard

  750one cock crow, a sound I’ve been as hungry

  for as the lean throats of cockerels:

  one dog, the master not around, three or four

  scrubby cattle: an apple tree a hundred

  years old looking better in spring

  755leaf than the house a hundred years

  old: it’s got so the only place you

  can appreciate won’t appreciate: the

  silence was ineluctable: I heard it

  & heard it: it reminded me of the

  760ground: noise is motion: silence

  deepens down and picks up ground

  boulders and deepens down to springwater

  33

  I’m split but not

  in two, I bough

  765into ramification,

  I break out into

  peripheries of leaf,

  mist informs my

  rondures: I go more

  770than halfway one way

  and crosslash back

  away: my

  splits overlace:

  the complication

  775strengthens me,

  interweaving my

  fragmentation, so

  that I include

  in a sweep of singleness

  780as much singleness

  as one needs and

  more than enough

  sweep

  34

  don’t think we don’t

  785know one breaks

  form open because he fears

  its bearing in on him

  (of what, the accusation,

  the shape of his eros, error,

  790his guilt he must buy

  costing himself)

  and one hugs form because

  he fears dissolution, openness,

  we know, we know:

  795one needs stanzas to take

  sharp interest in and

  one interests the stanza

  down the road to the wilderness:

  life, life: because it is

  800all one it must be divided

  and because it is

  divided it must be all one

  35

  wherever mortality sets up a net

  or responsibility’s strictures harden

  805I mount into a whirlwind and

  buzz off, clearing a streak

  I spend the night in sonnets but the

  next morning pack my bag with free verse

  the road is my winding song sheet

  810the rivers, branches, brooks purl

  my uneasy pleasures:

  leaving everything behind, I stick to

  nothing

  I will not hear the te
rms of arraignment

  815or appear in the marble courts

  I will not bear the sophistry,

  subtle ramification, of the arguments

  for and against:

  yet the guilt sharp as jails has gotten through:

  820the air dissolves and absorbs,

  oceans dissolve and absorb,

  the imagination changes things

  whose change, the hell of things, comforts me

  36

  straitened narrow, river-wound

  825through the pass, bluff walls misty

  with moss-like trees,

  doing what is worth doing is worth

  what doing it is worth

  but doing what is not worth doing

  830that can really be worth doing

  often when one is denied access

  to reality

  imagination will rise to the occasion

  and body

  835forth the vivid thing as if itself

  so the deprived

  may be given all but touch of the

  form, color, line

  or will produce the very presence of

  840the thingitself itself but with

  shadowy reservation to please the mind

  but not the solid body

  lawn full of goldfinches eating

  dandelion seeds, the headful whipped

  845over, held by a perchfoot—the yellows

  nearly interchangeable

  37

  everyone watches the world end once

  or if one is asleep

  the roots of his dreams loosen and

  850brain soil crumbles down the slopes

  or if a coma has risen right into the

  shallowest waters of awareness

  why then the world may as a skim of light end

  38

  I don’t care if I don’t tell the truth

  855the she-spider hangs to the ceiling

  of the backporch as if, dead since last

  November, alive: by her hang five

  egg sacs, waiting: the she-spider

  flares there, dead and dry, guarding still:

  860or I don’t care if I tell the truth