The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  head as if caught in a brush fire:

  I have seen the future; it just went by, put

  645away: it advertises strokes, hip replacements,

  insulin shots, sphygmomanometers or digital

  punches: there is an end to delays and

  remedies, regimens, and rehabs; another

  pathology interrupts following on pathology:

  650terrible descriptions of outcomes appear here

  and there, and outcomes, around which, though,

  humor glints or boundless guffaws roll combers:

  we’re trash, plenty wondrous: should I want

  to say in what the wonder consists: it is a tiny

  655wriggle of light in the mind that says, “go on”:

  that’s what it says: that’s all it says: river

  edges clear up into furrows: the spear lengthens

  till fish can’t outleap its accuracy: what is

  most beyond what is most beyond must be seen into:

  _________

  660love must be held still a minute to see if anything

  can be said about it: if one negative will do,

  will two negatives do more, more than two affirmatives:

  shall the lines continue to move a little in sum longer:

  but if a lake can look glassy, can’t a building: it’s

  665just a little piece of translucent, whitish light,

  it wriggles, it is like, say, one meander, one whole

  meander that came from nowhere and goes nowhere

  but it wriggles and guess what it says: have I

  cajoled you lately that I wantya: I’m none too

  670interested in regions because there’s plenty of

  spelled-out cultural differentiation in isolationisms,

  and, anyhow, it’s passing: I’m interested in the

  differentiations of which there are now few that the

  whole globe can belong to: precarious abstraction will

  675have to be the world’s feed for a long time

  before the little bits, so few, of concretion

  and worldwide specification begin to appear,

  but, though scanty, growing and leading into a

  growing world, not one spent: globe-round—

  680one thinks, slapping down the lines, making time

  with eternity, one will thrive beyond the brink but

  beyond the brink is no recollection but a wide

  giving way into silver that filters farther away

  into nothing: ghosts haunt the fields and hills,

  685the moon-soaked woodpaths, the misty cattail bogs

  _________

  the littlest time, for they are attracted to the

  light, the one a little farther on, a little farther,

  and the light pulls them all away, and then, who knows,

  becomes a rose wasted, perhaps, on the backside of

  690some barn, the summary rose rambled unseen: have

  you stopped to think what existence is, to be here

  now where so much has been or is yet to come and

  where isness itself is just the name of a segment

  of flow: stop, think: millennia jiggle in your eyes

  695at night, the twinklers, eye and star: the glistening

  on the leaves when morning dew runs, little streaks

  that head into drops, nodding leaves: think how

  fine a motion sensation is, that it sweeps the nerves

  and aligns the body’s every cell because another

  700exists: all the bets are off if

  pain is walking around the table cutting you or

  someone else up, or if poverty has worked its way

  up into your knees or you can’t get your eyes dry,

  or a child is bruised or a woman cornered

  705or thrills and violence can’t be distinguished:

  then existence recalls with relief that existence

  ends, that our windy houses crack their frames

  and spill, that nothing, not even cold killing bothers

  the stars: twinkle, twinkle: just a wonder:

  710I say, globe-round selfempowerment like this could

  be difficult and, perhaps, dangerous in the actual, but

  _________

  these ways of words merely trace out designs

  many can split up the filling in of: I punched

  out Garbage at the library and four titles

  715swept the screen, only one, Garbage Feed,

  seeming worth going on to; and that was about

  feeding swine right: so I punched Garbage Disposal

  and the screen came blank—nothing! all those

  titles, row on row, of western goodies, mostly

  720worse than junk, but not a word on Disposal: I

  should have looked, I suppose, under Waste Disposal

  but, who cares, I already got the point: I

  know garbage is being “disposed” of—but what

  I wanted I had gotten, a clear space and pure

  725freedom to dump whatever, and this means most

  of the catalog must go, so much that what is

  left will need no computer to be kept track of:

  har: words are a specialization on sound

  making a kind of language: but there are many

  730not just languages but kinds of language: the

  bluejay’s extensive vocabulary signals states

  of feeling or being—alarm, exasperation,

  feeding, idleness—and the signal systems

  lay out the states for the safety of sharing

  735by others, alerting to danger, even sharing

  food sources: whales’ pod-songs keep intimate

  transactions fluid: horses neigh, whinny, and

  _________

  snuffle (coach): elephants network even distant

  air with sound waves too low for us to hear:

  740oh, no: we are not alone in language: we may

  be alone in words, at least, almost alone in

  speaking them, not alone (Koko) in understanding

  them, at least reacting to them: we are nearly

  alone in words: but the words do for us what other

  745languages do for others—they warn, inform,

  reassure, compare, present: we may be alone in

  words but we are not singular in language:

  have some respect for other speakers of being and

  for god’s sake drop all this crap about words,

  750singularity, and dominion: it is so boring,

  when I hear it a hook of anger in my guts tears

  the lining: the world was the beginning

  of the world; words are a way of fending in the

  world: whole languages, like species, can

  755disappear without dropping a gram of earth’s

  weight, and symbolic systems to a fare you well

  can be added without filling a ditch or thimble:

  our cousins the birds talk in the morning: I

  can tell the weather by their voices before

  760I open my eyes: I know some of their “words”

  because I know, share with them, their states

  of being and feeling: my cousins the

  robins tug worms up from the lawn and eat them

  _________

  and that gives me a piece of conflictual reality

  765until I savor the hog in my bacon, admire the

  thighbone in my chicken: when the hens used to

  sing in the spring laying into their ladders,

  the windy courtship time of mating and

  nesting, I can hear the singing now, the good

  770times: I know the entire language of chickens,

  from rooster crows to biddy cheeps: it is a

  language sufficient to the forms and procedures

  nature assigned to chicken-birds but a language,

  as competition goes, no
t sufficient to protect

  775them from us: our systems now

  change their genes, their forms and procedures,

  house them up in all-life houses, trick their

  egg laying with artificial days and nights:

  our language is something to write home about:

  780but it is not the world: grooming does for

  baboons most of what words do for us.

  8

  sometimes old people snap back into life for a

  streak and start making plans, ridiculous, you know,

  when they will suddenly think of death again

  785and they will see their coffins plunge upward

  like whales out of the refused depths of their

  minds and the change will feel so shockingly

  _________

  different—from the warm movement of a possibility

  to a cold acknowledgment—they will seem not

  790to understand for a minute: at other times

  with the expiration of plans and friends and

  dreams and with the assaults on all sides of

  relapses and pains, they will feel a

  smallish ambition to creep into their boxes

  795at last and lid the light out and be gone,

  nevermore, nevermore to see again, let alone

  see trouble come on anyone again: oh, yes, there

  are these moods and transitions, these bolt

  recollections and these foolish temptations and

  800stratagems to distract them from the

  course: this is why they and we must keep our

  minds on the god-solid, not on the vain silks

  and sweets of human dissipation, no, sirree:

  unless of course god is immanent in which case

  805he may be to some slight extent part of the

  sweets, god being in that case nothing more than or

  as much as energy at large, a hair of it caught

  in candy: I just want you to know I’m perfectly

  serious much of the time: when I kid around

  810I’m trying to get in position to be serious:

  my daffydillies are efforts to excuse the

  presumption of assumption, direct address, my

  self-presentation: I’m trying to mean what I

  _________

  mean to mean something: best for that is a kind

  815of matter-of-fact explicitness about the facts:

  best of all, facts of action: actions, actions,

  actions, human or atomic: these actions cut

  curves out in space, spiral up or in, turn and

  turn back, stall, whirl: these are the motions

  820we learn from, these are the central figures,

  this is the dance, here attitude and character,

  precision and floundering lay out for us to see

  their several examples, comically wasteful, as

  with clowns or young squirrels playful at dusk:

  825here is the real morality, the economy of

  action and reaction, of driving ahead, of going

  slow, of walking the line, the tightrope, here

  the narratives of motion that tell the story

  the stories figure into facticity: let’s

  830study the motions, are they slovenly, choppy,

  attenuating, high, meandering, wasteful: we

  need nothing more, except the spelling out of

  these for those inattentive or too busily lost

  in the daily elaborations to prize the essential:

  835(1) don’t complain—ills are sufficiently

  clear without reiterated description: (2) count

  your blessings, spelling them over and over into

  sharp contemplation: (3) do what you can—

  take action: (4) move on, keep the mind

  _________

  840allied with the figurations of ongoing: when

  I was a kid I always, it seemed, had a point

  I couldn’t say or that no one could accept—

  I always sounded unconvincing; I lost the

  arguments: people became impatient and stuck

  845to their own beliefs; my explanations struck

  them as strange, unlikely: when I learned

  about poetry, I must have recognized a means

  to command silence in them, the means so to

  combine thinking and feeling, imagination and

  850movement as to spell them out of speech:

  people would buy the enchantment and get the

  point reason couldn’t, the point delivered below

  the level of argument, straight into the fat

  of feeling: so I’m asking you to help me, now:

  855yield to this possibility: I’m going to try to

  say everything all over again: I’ve discovered

  at sixty-three that the other thing I wished of

  poetry, that it prevent death, has kept me a

  little strange, that I have not got my feet out

  860of the embranglements of misapplication and out

  into a clear space to go; that I have to start

  again from a realization of failure: in fact,

  having learned about commanding silence and

  having, mostly by accident, commanded it a few

  865times, I’ve become afraid of convincingness,

  _________

  what harm it can do if there is too much of

  it along with whatever good, so I am now a

  little uncertain on purpose: I recognize cases

  in other words from time to time that I’d rather

  870see go through than my own: they seem wiser

  cases: they come from people who seem better

  wrapped around their spines: when their mouths

  are open, their vertebrae form a sounding

  foundation for their words: I have never,

  875frankly, grown up, not if growing up means I

  wouldn’t trade in what I have today for something

  I might get tomorrow: I’m a trader: I’m still

  looking for the buy to go all the way with:

  I’ve become convinced that I don’t have

  880anything particularly to convince anybody of: my

  rhetoric goes on, though, with a terrible

  machine-like insistence whether potholes

  appear in the streets or not, or knots in my

  line, or furriers in my traps: the trap shut

  885displeases no prey: pray you, go ahead around

  me; I’m letting go a few springs and bolts from

  my current mechanism: I’m getting down: I’m

  not recommending more altitude than wings, not

  anymore, not lately: no, no: not on your life.

  9

  890you don’t want to succeed too early and live

  in the shadow of your own peek, peak, pock,

  pork, puke: did I use the one about, the purpose

  of being alive is to be alive: or the one about

  the wildlife around here sometimes gets to be

  895pretty wild: this yellow tabby, not a kaffir,

  not a burmese, not a blue point siamese, not a

  striped manx, but just some old yellow cat

  come over here in our yard and stakes out the

  chipmunk or the garage mouse or rabbits or

  900squirrels: since we don’t have a cat of our

  own, his irregular visits keep the prey items

  puzzled: so yesterday morning, I saw the

  yellow settling in by the big yew and the

  sniffy rabbit came up the other side of the

  905(look, how many lines are ending in the)

  house on the driveway and when he turned into

  the backyard, the tabby dived out for him and

  in a few lean spreads of limbs just missed him:

  the rabbit did not take off down the permanent
<
br />   910road: he moved off just far enough away to be

  out of range of a cat sprint, and he sat still

  as the world can get, subduing, I suppose, his

  patting heart’s fear in the very midst of fear: for—

  _________

  well, there’s one chipmunk you won’t see

  915streaking around here anymore, plunging into

  cement holes by the back steps or into ground

  holes by the hydrangea or scrambling into the

  crack under the middle post of the garage:

  because (this is late the same day) I just saw

  920tabby walking away with him in his mouth: not

  a white longhair, not an abyssinian, not a