The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  calico, not a chat, but tabby, putting the

  chipmunk down by the day-lilies, hardly yet having

  their days, on the back hedge and then in

  925thrusting gulps and crunches downing chippy:

  it is the law of the jungle we have learned so

  much from: but some would say the purpose of

  living is to serve others or rule them, or to

  write music, and some would say that being alive

  930is like being dead, but I would say that the

  purpose though it might not always—or but

  seldom—come through is still being alive: I’m

  a little shook up about the chipmunk: the other

  day just before sunset, I watched him for

  935several minutes as he sat near the steps on the

  backporch in the full sun and looked around a

  bit now and then with an, taking in an, unprecedented

  leisure and pleasure, the sunlight nearly coming

  clear pink through his ears and forefeet: times

  _________

  940sometimes darken before dark: I’m running too many

  threads and dropping too many stitches in this

  weaving which is about, what, life and, mais oui,

  death, wildlife and broken (tamed) verse: the

  rabbit knows that if he doesn’t like it here he

  945can’t just go off somewhere else to live: so

  he carefully dissolves from panic and nibbles

  a sprig of weed, eases into a forward move,

  and lives in fear: not helplessly, but in the

  knowledge of his capabilities, his devices, his

  950bounces and split swerves: and he has young to

  beget and young to raise and this without

  benefit of tenure, estate, living trust, term

  insurance, or social security: he is naked every

  minute to clover tip or onslaught; onslaught

  955here meaning being chewed up: garbage disposal

  has become more sweetly if broadly waste disposal

  and guess what’s two percent of permanent waste,

  yep, disposable diapers, good to last

  five hundred years: cute little babies’ shit:

  960rambling thunderstorms in morning’s blue darknesses—

  such poetry, drumming and puddling:

  snakes of currency head up and head out down

  the driveway and off the sidewalk into the

  spearmint: the sky whams and bangs, splits

  965with light: dense rain shuts out the trees

  _________

  that reappear ghostly in a drizzle: birds, animals

  lie quiet (birds twig up), enduring’s acceptance, the

  waiting out of the passage: reminding me of

  Ole Liz who used to work in the fields—when

  970the big afternoon thunderheads found

  her out cropping tobacco, she’d say, “When the

  Lawd work, Ole Liza gone sit down”—and she would

  not work while the majestic procedures of hail

  and heaven went by: well-fed, the cat tucks in

  975feet, brings tail around, and dozes right out

  in the open where the prey can be totally puzzled

  by his indifference: prey move warily into this

  ambiguity with a brave speculation, learning not

  always to be terrified by a presence: and just

  980then, of course, or soon after, maybe even not

  until the next morning, the dozing ends, and

  if he doesn’t look out so ends poor chipmunkey:

  keep the open stare of the chill factor in warmth:

  even in the midst of passion plant the seed

  985whose vine or tree may hang you: things

  not followed as risks are risky: being alive

  means being alive to mischance’s chances.

  10

  in your end is my beginning, I repeat; also,

  my end; my end is, in fact, your end, in a way:

  _________

  990are we not bound together by our ends: and when,

  end to end, our ends meet, then we begin to

  see the end of disturbing endlessness: unity

  does what unity can: while preserving two

  it accords in mutuality a mist wonderfully and

  995onefully coming together in—ah—well, why

  entail sophistry: air and earth join, as you have

  often read, via sculpted stone on a high platform

  of the Old Peak: weight at great height fines

  out into a kind of buoyance and one’s feet feel

  1000slippery and groundless: the material

  spiritualizes and lock stone and air meet

  cordially with a high lust clamping one to the other:

  I must be at the crux of the matter: I do not

  feel I can go on: progression lies down in the

  1005ditches of inpouring doubt: I think of this tape

  (this is another tape, a little wider, just about

  pentameter) as the showboat churning down the

  Mississippi with the banks, the fast currents,

  the sandbars, drenchings; that is, it is going

  1010down, like it or not, and I am like an analyst

  or critic of action or behavior; I am saying,

  is she into her depth; did she pack in enough

  fuel to make it; shouldn’t you nudge the bow

  a touch starboard: and such like: such

  1015as, why is she doing this; where did

  _________

  she, and when, acquire this sense of mission:

  I know boats don’t have senses of mission:

  but you were going along with it, weren’t you:

  I’m afraid a yaw will get out of hand

  1020and the stern will swing around on the bow, and

  we’ll be wheeling in reverse, as if in

  reverse, in order to progress forward backward:

  it doesn’t really matter: hurricanes have hit

  inland far enough to drive boats of any size

  1025right up on river shores: and boats have had to

  wait weeks, at times, for rain or for a wall

  arriving downstream from a flood elsewhere:

  I read Life on the Mississippi a long time ago

  and those boats were harder to steer than this:

  1030still, it’s rough for anyone in a fog, and

  mark twains all over the place are hardly

  reassuring: but it’s okay: we’re going far

  away soon into space, and ships will roll

  and enmeshments of asteroids or stellar dust

  1035confuse speed: it doesn’t matter: we’ll get

  seed off this primordial hulk before we drown

  it in throwaways: we have a spirit that

  clears after every stupidity, designs treads for

  offroaders, matches the right bacterium to the

  1040right poison: I just wish neanderthal were still

  here: I would have loved those rugged little

  _________

  four-foot fellows: imagine having a nest

  of workers down in the basement, sturdy little

  whippersnappers to run errands: first thing you

  1045know the muvahs are fucking your mother, in laws,

  so, so much for neanderthals’ brisk hard nuts: I

  think I’m at the crux right now: I can hardly think

  or think of hardly a thing to say: I’ve searched

  my mind for swerves of narrative, minor

  1050assemblages of incident on a string, emblems of

  the shapes of actions, the essential displaying

  the newspapery: sometimes, just when you think

  the spirit is going to rise, something else does:

  life, life is like a poem: the moment it

  1055begins, it beg
ins to end: the tension this

  establishes makes every move and moment, every

  gap and stumble, every glide and rise significant:

  for if life or poem went dribbling endlessly

  on, what identifiable arc or measure could it

  1060clarify: within limits the made thing accepts

  its revelation and dissolution, its coming and

  going, beginning and ending, being and nonbeing:

  the poem moves through the smooth or astonished

  beginning, the taking on of engagement and

  1065complication, the gathering up of direction and

  possibility, and the falling out and fading

  away: this is all so reasonable, we sometimes

  _________

  wonder why grief tells us so we wanted to cling

  to being, the good things, oh, the good things,

  1070but in real life as in real poems clarifying

  form, such as the beginning and ending of the

  trip to Mexico (with the middle at San Miguel

  de Allende, double-middled by a week in Mexico

  City) are minor forms within larger constructs

  1075not so clear: big segments crack off—say,

  when you moved from Allentown to Albuquerque

  or when the divorce first was named—giving

  you impressions, among others, of irrelevancies,

  hacked up intuitions, but also false, to some

  1080extent, notions of recency—your late departure,

  the house you just sold—and when that is

  blanked out of memory, life is shortened and

  you are young in a new time, pure local lyrics

  coexistent with what appears to be a whole

  1085shambles, the shambles questioning the lyric

  out of easy shape, and the lyric providing

  intervals of symmetry in the jumbled enlargement,

  but it is subservient when art imitates life;

  art makes life, just as it makes itself, an

  1090imitation: art makes shape, order, meaning,

  purpose where there was none, or none discernible,

  none derivable: life, too, if it is to have

  meaning, must be made meaningful: if it is to

  _________

  have purpose, its purpose must be divined, invented,

  1095manifested, held to: a wallow is a wallow:

  who knows: everything here may be meaninglessly

  prevalent so as to give us the potential of

  making’s range: when we bawl over our

  predicament we merely accuse ourselves: why

  1100must we answer up to reality, when we can

  axle reality into our illusions: not

  delusional illusions but just the “turn”

  toward the possible, the hope, the trust, the

  belief: oh, well: argument is like dining:

  1105mess with a nice dinner long enough, it’s garbage.

  11

  an early June morning in early June, we, having

  already gone out to breakfast, pop into the red

  Toyota Tercel and breeze down the hill by Lake

  Cayuga to the farmers’ market, so bright, so

  1110clear, rows and rows of cars and stalls and,

  beyond, boats docked calm on the glassy inlet:

  the people look a little ruffled, like yards

  trying to come out of icebound winters into

  springs, the old stalks still there, the space

  1115of the new stuff not filled out: affliction

  here, where the heavy woman, heavier than last

  fall, leans over to swish one knock-knee past

  _________

  (check that rhyme) the other; affliction there,

  where the wobble-legged man leans over into his

  1120arm crutches, a four-legged progression: aging

  women, drooped breasts under loose T-shirts,

  hair making a virtue of snow-white or veering

  off into an original expression of blue:

  toothless, big-bellied, bald, broad-rumped,

  1125deaf: the afflicted, hurts hurting but less

  than they hurt at home or, if hurting more,

  with some compensation: one absolutely lovely

  person, perhaps: the radiance of some babies’

  faces, the perfect interest of some boy in mud

  1130puddles: and this is all under the aspect of

  eternity, soon to be: but listen to the

  good-mornings and how’ve-you-beens and

  were-you-away-any-of-the-winters, along with

  the hanging baskets of fuchsia, purple and red

  1135and streaked white, tuberous begonias with the

  freshest colors alive, bread, and stall after

  stall of vegetables, goat cheese, honey, coffee

  plus a live minnequin who is moved to thank you

  by coins and bills dropped in a hat: this is

  1140we at our best, not killing, scheming, abusing,

  running over, tearing down, burning up: why

  did invention ever bother with all this, why

  does the huge beech by the water come back every

  _________

  year: oh, the sweet pleasures, or even the hope

  1145of sweet pleasures, the kiss, the letter from

  someone, the word of sympathy or praise, or just

  the shared settled look between us, that here

  we are together, such as it is, cautious and

  courageous, wily with genuine desire, policed

  1150by how we behave, all out of eternity, into

  eternity, but here now, where we make the most

  of it: I settle down: I who could have used

  the world share a crumb: I who wanted the sky

  fall to the glint in a passing eye: the crack

  1155in the dome of knowledge, the aperture, so to

  say, poetically speaking, into faith is, of

  course, as everyone knows, the magical exception

  to the naturalistic rule: derivations (pharmacological?)

  from nature do what they can, usually

  1160with terrible side effects or with disjunctivitis

  with other drugs (with, with) but one exception

  as in rising in a fiery go-cart is lustfully

  believed to overturn, or else to buoy, all

  naturalism, by which is intended to be meant

  1165sense, common and unusual varieties, science,

  knowledge, craft: there is a web-worm falls

  sometimes aslant the honeysuckle hedge in spring

  breeze or other dislocation and finds itself

  asquirm dangerously dangled in the open air (I’ve

  _________

  1170seen hornets trim those babies right out of the

  air): this one I paused to view was wrestling

  up the single thread of web, nipping and tucking,

  reaching up for a hold on the tight and bringing

  itself up till the bit length could be added

  1175to the tiny cotton ball gathered at its

  head: but this is mere mechanics: down its

  back was a purplish streak exactly the color

  of honeysucklebushlimbstems, the top part (buds)

  of the stems: his feet, his laterals, were

  1180exactly the color of the lateralhoneysucklebush

  limbstems: while this waits explanation, I

  hold it a sufficient miracle, on which, tho,

  I posit no faith of a kind but faith of another

  kind: that is, maybe some spooky agency does

  1185manage all: we’re attracted to stars not because

  they’re confessional but because of the roles

  they create into play; we’re attracted to

  pretend, not fact, first: then, the clothing

  of creativity about the person attr
acts us to

  1190his sins: we are awed and want the clay feet

  to stop walking over us: also we want better

  to understand how to reach this creativity’s

  sinfulness ourselves: so why can’t poets

  speak in tongues, others than their own; is

  1195truth in the fact or in the persuasion, in the

  _________

  credible action or the flat statement: I don’t

  care whether anybody believes me or not: I

  don’t know anything I want anybody to believe

  in: but if you will sit with me in the light

  1200of speech, I will sit with you: I would rather

  do this than eat your ice cream, go to a movie,