The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  will no knowledge of loss be in it

  and in the wind no wailing.

  1968

  Sight Seed

  When the jay caught

  the cicada midair, a fluffy,

  rustling beakful, the

  burr-song flooded dull but

  5held low: the jay perched and

  holding the prey to the branch

  as if to halt

  indecorous song pecked

  once, a plink that did it,

  10but in the noticeable silence

  proceeded at ease

  and expertly to

  take this, then that eye.

  1978 (1984)

  Negative Symbiosis

  Without linkage or

  ravin living

  couldn’t

  last: however

  5far through

  changes

  the gnat wrestles

  the bulby

  high

  10evening air;

  however far

  into the

  dark the worm

  rubbles

  15under the root,

  life takes a

  bow,

  gives

  the go-ahead:

  20even the

  rattler,

  his neck

  gagged with

  fur,

  25trims up

  the world so

  something

  tiny can

  come

  30through.

  Citified

  You can turn goats loose on an island

  and forget about fences: your

  chickens can graze away from the yard

  and not stray: your horse or cow can

  5range wide securely: the land

  ends in all directions, and surf marshals

  the shore tight: but much as an island

  prevents escape it welcomes entry and no

  eye can watch the round at once: glance up

  10at the horizon’s flat line

  but what on the island’s

  other side is oozing or clamoring ashore,

  a sea novelty or a pestilence of

  demonstrable mouths: your horse

  15could screech, your cow low, your goats

  whirl, huff, and stamp, the unfenced

  becoming the line of defense, alert line,

  at least: and guineas, if you had any,

  could chatter day or night to the unusual:

  20but roundly enclosed just so

  roundly vulnerable, you might as well live in

  a single small direction, splinter, among others’

  fractures and have to look nowhere but ahead

  except of course occasionally to glance behind.

  1974

  previously uncollected poems from

  THE REALLY SHORT POEMS OF A. R. AMMONS (1990)

  To:

  Phyllis Ammons, Ingrid Arnesen, Cynthia Bond, David Burak, Augustus Carleton, Roald Hoffmann, Phyllis Janowitz, Steven Tapscott, Jean West

  praise and thanks.

  And in a very different mood, but still with praise and thanks, to the memory of my longtime editor and friend, John Benedict (1932–1990)

  Weathering

  A day without rain is like

  a day without sunshine

  Hype

  A pollen

  fly makes

  so much

  of sounding

  5like a

  bee because

  he has

  no sting.

  1988

  Over and Done With

  Continually is continuously

  from time to time

  and continuously is

  continually all the time.

  (1986)

  Cousins

  Hornets nesting under the weatherboarding

  drop by the window: I think them

  catkins the wind’s picked from the birch nearby

  then notice they drop

  5funneling centrally from expanse:

  mind alters agreeably to convergences home.

  1966

  Equilibrations

  If you walk back

  and forth

  through a puddle pretty

  soon

  5you wet the whole

  driveway but of

  course dry

  the puddle up.

  Second Party

  I learn from the lake,

  whole, composed,

  whose shores thrash

  wind-songs, that

  5I might trouble

  you with an edge of

  praise: I

  stand by you

  as complete as

  10you have made me

  and praise will allow.

  Digging Wonder

  Immediacy’s stone

  has

  outlasted

  every other

  5stone

  Tryst

  I’m to go see you tonight:

  birds that know where to fly

  are loose under my ribs:

  your eyes fly here to my mind’s

  5eye: I dwell in them:

  what if I’m frozen

  _________

  when I see you; what if I burn

  completely up: the birds

  may break out and go

  10too soon; or, too bad

  if my self flies to you

  early, and I can’t follow.

  1966

  Success Story

  I never got on good

  relations with the world

  first I had nothing

  the world wanted

  5then the world had

  nothing I wanted

  Glacials

  In the geological rock garden

  split boulders

  lie about as kinds and ages,

  a hundred million years or more in

  5many frozen solid:

  dusty thaws flow

  steam-loose from the surfaces and

  wind on the way

  at last, the wind mixing

  10old and current time

  in mixings beginning and

  ended, time unbegun, unended.

  Stoning Stone

  I put down

  the splintered ax

  and in the

  fury of failure

  5attacked time’s

  stone with

  tears: the stone

  holds, but tears

  soften the stone

  10of my striving.

  Substantial Planes

  It doesn’t

  matter

  to me

  if

  5poems mean

  nothing:

  there’s no

  floor

  to the

  10universe

  and yet

  one

  _________

  walks the

  floor.

  1985

  Settlement

  It snowed

  last night

  and this

  morning no

  5track in or

  out shows

  on the

  cemetery

  road.

  Deaf Zone

  Last night’s

  drizzle’s

  this morning’s

  rushed

  5brook:

  the ledge roars

  so,

  look both ways

  crossing the road,

  10the

  brook’s passing

  louder than cars’.

  Scarecrow

  Nature’s undoings

  let

  the maple rise

  close in on the young dead elm,

  5the new

  branches paralleling

  trails along

  the old so

  that the young elm

  10stands dry, held

  upright in broad

  becoming�
�s long going.

  1986

  Filling in the Dots

  Pigeons, thirty-five in a

  speed, break

  over the lombardies

  just so

  5as, missing, to

  outline the row.

  1977

  Figuring Belief

  Praying answers prayer:

  in the deep spells

  of inquiry and hope,

  a self

  5enabled to rise again

  to the compromises

  and the shattering caring

  forms

  Crinkling Trails

  Snow’s our winter brightening,

  the sun far away and low

  and, anyway, held away by clouds

  the color of everything else:

  5but at night blank fields

  disclose the tiniest traveler,

  the source of light too diffuse

  to find or hide from or to

  hide any side of a thing or

  10action, mouse rumpled in a fluff

  of wings, black roses, leaf radials flung

  up from undersnow by

  daylight’s digging crows.

  1985

  Cracking a Few Hundred Million Years

  So the plastic conduits for the new

  phone system could be put down,

  the big-clawed, wheeling

  forehoe dug a trench

  5into the original shale-lyings,

  soil mixing trench-side with broken stone:

  _________

  this morning, after last night’s

  downpour, the ground smells

  sour, a scent no human form was here to

  10know when the shale went down.

  (1990)

  Soul’s Seas

  Tears for the long-gone times

  and for the little time left to go

  are the buoyancy whereby

  the butterfly ship

  5gets wings to the wind and

  flies, all energies exhilarations.

  Clarifications

  The crows, mingled

  powder white,

  arrive floundering

  through the

  5heavy snowfall:

  they land ruffling

  stark black

  on the spruce boughs and

  chisel the neighborhood

  10sharp with their cries.

  Celestial Dealings

  The heaped hemlock

  boughs hardly

  sway in the

  profound cold,

  5snow, anyway,

  too quick to miss.

  Waking

  The oak grove’s

  a lake on

  stilts:

  underwater boulder-boughs

  5define

  standing clarities:

  in gusts waves

  nod,

  plunge toward breaking.

  1985

  Glass Specialty

  The redbird, nesting

  in the nearby

  yewbush, has found

  a fluttering rival in

  5the garage window: pecking

  as at a nectar of hatred,

  he (not a hummingbird)

  thrashingly sustains

  himself before his image:

  _________

  10weakened to the ground, he

  comes back up, the ruffling

  rival there every time.

  1989

  Pedagogy Agog

  The smart gain

  knowledge

  and learn to

  express

  5themselves to join

  the

  world of power

  where

  it pays to

  10know

  little and say

  less.

  Touching

  The spangled, mauve

  hydrangea heads, having

  nodded over upsidedown

  with summer weight

  5and summer storms

  now have their

  _________

  bottoms topped

  by fluffy cones of snow

  heavy enough

  10to make them

  going down

  go on down.

  Planet Actions

  The spider, dashing from

  marginal boughshade

  to cross the driveway

  hits the hot macadam

  5and, legs dancing,

  scoots back for

  the cool: brother,

  I effuse, hot

  weather we’re having!

  Worky Shallows

  The sun’s angle’s so

  the creek’s slow’s

  dim, flat, clear

  but down where a shoal

  5breaks the flow thin and

  fast—shattered into curves

  and runlets—

  the sun blinds everything

  white with action.

  Still Frame

  The wind played

  down frost-still,

  sunrise brings three

  crows

  5into the nearly

  empty sugar

  maple, their

  pitching and flapping

  jarring a touch of gold leaves loose

  10that

  sprinkles down as if

  picked by a breeze.

  1984

  This

  time will wash

  away

  so

  clean not a

  5cry

  will

  be left in

  it

  Spring Tornado

  Trees lash, warp:

  the low-down

  drops over the ridge

  valley-deep through here:

  5terror pops out

  like shoots or buds,

  just the sky to be

  left whole.

  1968 (1984)

  Bottommost

  We circle the sinkhole

  the coil spins in:

  when the speed is close and sufficient,

  a tube of nothingness

  5opens down which

  attracted objects mill exodus.

  Time Spans

  What lightning

  strikes

  in an

  instant the

  5boulder hums

  all year

  Crow Ride

  When the crow

  lands, the

  tip of the sprung spruce

  bough weighs

  5so low, the

  system so friction-free,

  the bobbing lasts

  way past any

  interest in the subject.

  Roundel

  When unity, having found its way throughout,

  draws all things into a

  single bloat, manyness slices

  the innermost layer and pushes the skin away

  5and there as before in all its profusion and

  differentiation is the world again, hail, sleet, mist-ice, snow

  Calling

  Wind rocks

  the porch chairs

  somebody home

  That Day

  You came to see me one day and

  as usual in such matters

  _________

  things grew significant—

  what you believed, the way you

  5turned or leaned: when

  you left, our area tilted, a

  tile, and whatever

  opposes desolation slid away.

  Poetry to the Rescue

  You must be

  nearly lost to

  be (if

  found) nearly

  5found

  Ah

  When the forehead drains

  and the limbs akimbo

  freeze

  so that the body can

  5be carried as

  by stubs a log

  the true sigh is not

  yet but when

&nb
sp; ground-packed

  10the tendons slip the

  joints, the muscles run,

  the bones chink loose.

  (1987)

  Pebble’s Story

  Wearing away

  wears

  wearing