The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  2040sacred and others secular and some say everything

  is sacred or everything is secular: but if

  _________

  everything is sacred (or secular), then what is

  that: words, which attach to edges, cannot

  represent wholeness, so if all is all, then it

  2045just is: snakes have been worshipped, but I

  consider them a little on the light side of

  sacred, and although evil brown recluses electrify

  dark corners with meaning, thus making cleanings

  paradisiacal, I don’t suppose they can quite

  2050symbolize resurrection, the way scarabs can:

  still, it seems evident that in the lush mercy

  of the giver of things one should not be so

  sparing as to think that generosity would trim

  a slither off the divinity of any creature: so

  2055it is all probably not a matter of the sacred

  and secular, the good and bad, virtuous and

  evil but a matter of measure; that is, it is

  the fullness thereof; and all things that exist

  are full of the fullness thereof and cannot,

  2060without loss, be tapped, drained, squooshed, or

  stuck on fine little pins: to be on the lookout

  for evil (swamp rattlers) is a form of paying

  attention, and to pay attention is to behold the

  wonder, and the rights, of things, so just as

  2065the fear of losing something (or someone) increases

  its value enormously, so wariness of vipers and

  other maelstroms of panic give us the brilliant

  _________

  morning, the sun brittle on the hill-line before

  it pops an arc-glob: there may be some husks,

  2070chaff which the wind bloweth away, right on the

  bottom of things, such as poison hulls or juices

  from lethal vines, so with that division, I would

  rather call everything else holy, you know, even

  plowing a good way into garbage, taking that on

  2075as having, perhaps, just served a sacred function

  or, having passed through the cleansing of decay,

  just about to: for, you know, forms are never

  permanent form, change the permanence, so

  that one thing one day is something else another

  2080day, and the energy that informs all forms just

  breezes right through filth as clean as a whistle:

  all this stuff here is illusory, you know, and

  while it gives you bad dreams and wilding desires

  and sometimes makes you spit up at night, it is

  2085the very efflorescence of the fountain of shapes,

  so while I might regard the digestive fire lit

  at the top of the mound a purifying ritual, the

  white smoke an incense, highrising as a wish,

  aromatic as a blessing, I think I would not be

  2090blasphemous, unless, of course, we as fallen

  creatures should divide things up and strive to

  be holy, not whole: things go round and

  round and tie up a fullness which I call the

  _________

  reality, the reality of the soup that includes

  2095all chunks, and the reality is holy in my view,

  if one may be permitted a view in matters so

  significant: it is generally held by scientific

  people and even some secular humanists that if

  you visit immediate outer space you will not

  2100find the portals of heaven but a metallic

  clutterment you should be trying to go at the

  same speed as: similar orbits, similar speeds:

  time, space, and such like gets funny and you

  could suffer a hit in the head by an overthrusted

  2105tidbit: but it can seem slow, as with an

  18,000½ mph object overtaking an 18,000 mph

  object—it can seem to take all day, if there

  were a day up there (there’ll be no night): see

  what I mean: days are little bent rectangles

  2110turned round the world: actually, days are

  durances in the eternal beam the diurnal earth turns

  (daily?) through: but don’t feel bad about the

  celestial garbage, orbits thick and thin: it is

  composed of the same matter that rusts in the

  2115asteroids or fusions in the sun: celestial

  garbage is so far the highest evidence of our

  existence here: except for that vehicle that

  got away: but the mystique of high places lingers

  on, the altar-like flames residual in the high

  _________

  2120levels of trash management: asteroids could pepper

  earth to auras of salt-white pumice with the indifference

  the collar of a launch missile could whack you

  bumfuzzled: if there is to be any regard for

  human life, it will have to be ours, right regard

  2125for human life including all other forms of life,

  including plant life: when we eat the body of

  another animal, we must undergo the sacrifice

  of noticing that life has been spent into our

  life, and we must care, then, for the life we

  2130have and for the life our life has cost, and we

  must make proper acknowledgments and sway some

  with reverence for the cruel and splendid tissue

  biospheric: I love a poem every bit assimilated

  into motion, whereas some will dwell with a

  2135rubbish heap of bone, boulder, rust weir, wing

  feather, cot spring, sounds pretty nice: properly

  turned out, anything can most please me:

  anxiety likes (an anxious person likes) to sit

  midst an emptiness, emptiness wearing away, absorbing

  2140the nettles and inflictive formations of things,

  whereas cold folks love the stimulations of

  pricks and tensions, intolerable griefs and

  leanings, terrifying risks and exposures: the

  cold out of all this terror get a pleasant move

  2145only: can you imagine: even, though, the

  _________

  anxious calm down occasionally and want to turn

  away from the boredom of coming down and the

  boredom of anxiety by taking an interest in

  something: even, sometimes, taking a little

  2150interest in something displaces the anxiety,

  refocuses the attention, puts the mind off

  itself: on a shelf is a good place to put the

  mind: the mind, I have heard so much in its

  praise: it comes to your rescue only if you’ve

  2155already heard of it: the wise, though, have

  all the time been gobbling, balling, iffing, fighting:

  the mind’s a pale savior: the soup it brings

  is clearer even than the high recipes of

  anxiety, the zombie land of the totally present

  2160totally absent: but it pacifies the losers,

  it absorbs the distractions from the actual:

  there is a place for it: anxiety can go into

  Wanamaker’s, for example, and breeze aisles of

  its way in burning networks throughout the nine

  2165levels or so of merchandise and look for nothing,

  stumble on nothing, nothing of interest: it

  will, on the other hand, name the spot on a kid’s

  collar, think universal thoughts about some

  artificial piece of defenestration or

  2170look under the occult, religious, or children’s

  section for a nonexistent book of poems: out of

  _________

  it:
wow: patience wants to know how to needle

  and thread and what oil to use on the threading

  spool and why sometimes the best piece of

  2175wood is not right for what you have in mind:

  prosodically speaking, anxiety is none too keen

  on entanglements, as with the bitchy requirements

  of form or rhyme: being trapped into a failing

  consideration, or simply being trapped, races

  2180anxiety up a rev too high: anxiety wants to

  mow through: a clean sweep, forget the legislation

  and, often, truly, it can be so nice to watch

  the classical move through the complication, as

  with Larry Bird en route for a lay-up, and

  2185anxiety often itself has such heights of stalled

  cumuli it can perform miracles, it can in seeking

  ease deal with more substance than a clanking bore

  can: it can, oh, yes, and that is the best

  kind of poetry, the kind that seeking resolution

  2190and an easing out of tension still out-tenses the

  intensifiers: understatement rides swells

  of easing away: anything else is sunk barges,

  no gouging good, and practically everything

  else is like that: the hackers, having none,

  2195hack away at intensity: they want to move,

  disturb, shock: they show the idleness of

  pretended feeling: feeling moves by moving

  _________

  into the considerations of moving away: real

  feeling assigns its weight gently to others,

  2200helps them meet, deal with the harsh, brutal,

  the ineluctable, eases the burdens of unclouded

  facts: the strident hackers miss no chance to

  dramatize, hurt, fairly or unfairly, for they

  fear their emptiness: the gentlest, the most

  2205refined language, so little engaged it is hardly

  engaging, deserves to tell the deepest wishes,

  roundabout fears: loud boys, the declaimers,

  the deaf listen to them: to the whisperers,

  even the silent, their moody abundance: the

  2210poem that goes dumb holds tears: the line,

  the fire line, where passion and control waver

  for the field, that is a line so difficult to

  keep in the right degree, one side not raiding

  the other: if I reap the peripheries will I

  2215get hardweed seed and dried roughage, roughage

  like teasel and cattail and brush above snow in

  winter, pure design lifeless in a painted hold.

  1989

  BRINK ROAD (1996)

  for my wife and son

  A Sense of Now

  Rock frozen and fractured

  spills, a shambles,

  and tiers of time pile into,

  shatter through

  5other tiers or angle up

  oddly, brightly lined with

  granite or talus, a jumble,

  “metaphysical debris”:

  but the stream finding its

  10way down a new hill spills

  along the right ledges, shifts

  the schist chips about and

  down with becoming coherence,

  and moss beds down ruffling

  15shale edges dark gray

  to green, and the otter

  drinks from sidepools

  almost perfectly clear.

  (1996)

  Picking Up Equations

  Not smart to be out under trees with the wind still this

  high: billowing & breaking bring down stob ends

  of last year’s drought-wood that died way up in the branches,

  and a nick on the noggin could drop you, no one around

  5to see after you or call rescue, or you could just be

  dazzled and wander off down the road, wild: still, don’t

  you like picking up storm cast, swatches of leaves snapped

  off, bark rippings, to weight the wind’s reach each thing

  gave to, how high it held or hung, what angle brought

  10it down: one thing’s certain, falls shadow the wind,

  ellipses, sprung, noding downwind to the arc including everything.

  (1995)

  Enameling

  The ice-bound spruce boughs

  point downward

  as if to

  slide their sheathes off:

  5the fairest morning

  in weeks, crystalline,

  yields to the fire

  rising in the east:

  even the smallest presences

  10take on orientation—lit

  and shaded snow, twinkling

  millions in starred

  ground frost, dust-snow

  highlighting twigs

  15lighting birds

  flurry free to light on.

  1979 (1979)

  Up-Country

  Their faces fire-red and steaming, the hunters

  are out the first morning along the edges and

  crossings of backroads: guns unlocked hang

  broken over their arms: they blow the fist not

  5caught in the jacket pocket: back home, the wife

  is out of the kitchen and off to work, work now

  mostly deskwork, women’s work: the men pad their

  right shoulders, eager for the answering recoil

  of the spent thrust: the bark on the snow-paled

  10trees seems pure male: the brush thicket, the

  mazes of stripped vines, the sunk water under

  pooled leaves, the slash-back branches are male,

  the bucks springing, startled still, dropping:

  back at the office, in the shop, the women are

  15fiddling with papers: out here, the parameters

  burst, the deep roots of the caverns spill through.

  Sparklings

  The mind derives

  from the manifold

  concretions and

  motions of nature

  _________

  5motions of its own

  reaching up into the

  curvatures of unity

  but is not

  content to vanish,

  10extinguished, into the

  resolutions of nothingness,

  but precisely as the

  world’s world fades

  behind

  15projects structures of

  design,

  placements,

  so that capability’s

  entanglements can filigree

  20the very

  freedom of nothingness,

  the mind’s world

  shining direction from

  the void of unity

  25toward the enchantments

  of what needs to be.

  (1988)

  Cool Intimacies

  What the power is and what

  we can do to save

  _________

  ourselves with or from it,

  how are we to know,

  5receiving it sieved, in hints

  and doubleblips, echoes from

  dubious bluffs, silent

  declarations, birds and leaves

  in motion, announcements

  10from “bodies” and points of light:

  flood or puddle, whatever

  it is, it stands

  in the Way: we here and

  there ride, wade, drown.

  1975

  Fascicle

  There’s a rift of days sunny (not too windy, not

  too cold) between leaf- and snowfall when

  raking works: away on a weekend, you could

  miss it and rain could sog everything slick-flat

  5or gusts could leave no leaf not lifting

  off the ground: stick

  around the house, a big sheet ready, a strong-caned

&nb
sp; rake strung tight, and catch the sun

  just when it stills the air dry: that’s likely

  10to be before some cold front frost-furring

  the saw-edged leaves glistened brittle, clouds

  tightening the horizon: then the white leaves fly.

  1993

  Loving People

  This enterprise answers

  to none of the natural

  balances, trade-offs,

  exactions: it doesn’t

  5shape to debit

  and credit

  differences: people are

  losing propositions: what

  they build flakes away,