by A. R. Ammons
fiercely despised even by the moderate:
305but the lugubriously weighty members,
they seem bestial and need to be
tied up: nevertheless, there may be
those who prefer them to the dinky
winks: the dabblers: the little
310bitty bouncers, splintery, lacking heft
or duration of stroke: other
orders apply, though: and overcompensating
executives order regulars around,
mere laborers not at the crevice:
315in life, I’ll tell you, you have to
bend down and get what you can: you
may have to peck around the biscuit
when the biscuit’s gone, drain a drop
of honey from a bottle already tossed:
_________
320git in there and git it while the
gittin’s good: though others walk
away with a thousand times as much:
7
when I was young under the apple
trees, the very whispering of the
325breezes seemed the parental (and
societal) authority: so I became
hooked on the nature of things:
when I learned the breeze and the
repression were not the same, I still
330did nothing about it, because it
seemed disrespectful to me to criticize
the creators (after all, they (or
he or it) made the apple trees) so
I went right on thinking myself wrong
335(in some ways I was) and the superego
right: I’ve run around supporting,
literally propping up, my victimizers,
establishing them in praise cubicles
when oopsy-daisy they were as screwed
340up as I am and made a mess of creation,
namely, me: Lord, here I am old, and
my life of service has drained me,
and I have worked to earn the respect
_________
of those I no longer respect: have mercy
345on me: you cannot, I suppose, give
me another chance: right? well, I
never expected it: but I certainly
do wish I had worked through my
adolescence and kissed the past
350goodbye (only to return later free
for a different worship:) I don’t
suppose you want to hear anything
more about me today: well, you know
after a hard freeze, say at the end
355of November or very early December,
ephemerae and moths bound and flutter
about on a warmish day like posthumous
trash: what do these things mean,
starting so late as ghosts when the
360hard water is dripping from its
prophecy of what’s to come: dust-winged
soft-flown entities, not a bee-buzz
or mosquito-whine among them, the
living dead or doomed, the mockery of
365summer, of fall, already shut down,
the crickets stunned silent where
they stood like little cargoes of
recollection: I don’t suppose you
want to hear anymore about bugs:
_________
370when I was in the second grade, I
came home one day, and my mother made
me kneel before her aproned knees,
and she ran a fine-tooth comb thru
my hair, and the plump little head
375lice dribbled out onto the white
apron: I was looking right at them:
their fine legs wiggled their
relocation about: my itchy scalp
felt so good: my mother scraped away
380for days to get the nits: we were
clean people: I caught them boogers
from somebody, but I never did get
the itch, even though a few poor
people came in smelling awful (to
385school, I mean) because their parent
had greased them for the itch: one
time a student told the teacher her
mother said “she warn’t greasing
fer the itch till adder Christmas”:
390it smelt so, I mean: better to scratch
than stink for the holidays, is my
opinion, too: I had a clean pair
of overalls every Monday morning:
that’s the way it went
8
395if Homer can nod, I can have
narcolepsy: it seems even with Mr.
Stevens that he was a poet when he
was scarcely himself: he made
being verbs of being: his head buzzed
400wuz, wuz, wuz, wuz, although,
nodding, he sometimes slipped an active
verb through: oh, but
sensitivity comes of being’s
states of being, these linked equivalences,
405were, been, was, is, are, be, you
name it: whoever
could muster a hive of in the’s and
of the’s like Mr. Stevens or who could
warp the obvious into half an hour
410of tangled nothingness (that
only needed to be unbent) like Mr.
Stevens: but Mr. Stevens’s lines!
laid like a railbed, tie after tie,
with no sign of integrated
415progression but two stiff pieces of
stretched iron: you should see me do
other poets, beside whom this praise
raves: but the tape is too narrow:
_________
the lines turn in on themselves:
420they can’t get loose, they break
back, they can’t lope into loops!
well, they seem to be doing okay
right now: perhaps, I was wrong:
I’ve changed my timing now to fit
425this: we poets endure, become the
source of such curious effects: we
are paid (infrequently and in small)
for that: but heck: for such fun,
even if so little, what fee: I put
430my attention, weighty baggage, in
the locker room and try to lose it:
or like one of those little
luggage motor trains, so cute, it runs over
me: anything to get it out or away:
435I put it down here on this strip:
I dabble the surface and dither the
image: who is in there: not certain:
but then at least when I strike a
clean mirror, however fearful, I
440shout—I’m whole, it’s me: I’m
split, halved, but included: if I
get it outward, though, engagement
releases my paint into the splattering
of reality, so many hues and
_________
445daubs, such singular intricacy of
who am I and who are you: and look
at us together (possibly), angels
and worms following that: I feel
that my attention, torn down
450and thrown out, has been picked up by the
trash truck: maybe it’s enfeebled
enough now that it will gentle along
like a drought brook, a small irrigation,
not a tearing up by the roots or
455drowning: not a jaguar slink-quick
as shadows in a jungle storm: but
strong enough to beg mercy, peel
apples, and slowly stroke whatever
will love me: none but a dullard
460fails to praise the dullard: maybe
not the intellectual dullard as much
as the emotional dullard: the lethargic,
the slow, unexcitable, understated,
the puncturer of loft, the groun
ded:
465no event rising up before him raises
him: he entertains the latest craze
with slumbers: how enviable: one
whose attention cannot quite unravel
itself from dream or sleep or mere
470wandering, who cannot focus on focus
_________
whose spine chills with reptilian
patience: go to the sluggard,
thou sluggard, and slug it out
9
the hills are alive with indifference,
475a trembling, high-voltage
who-gives-a-hoot: I am so glad I
feel it so strong: they are not
after me, the hills, nor is anyone:
and I am not responsible to raise
480them high or treed or consoled:
mountains could bother them: but I
don’t care: mountains don’t bother
them, though, because mountains,
too, are indifferent, only bigger:
485no imperatives are delivered from
the peaks—except, of course, it’s
hard to get up them and not much
easier to get down: but I don’t
have to follow lofty urgings
490ignoring which could bring pain:
except, perhaps—“don’t stand below
high boulders on a deforested slope
in pouring rain”: I mean, one does
have to mind the constitutions and
495configurations of things: pay no
_________
mind and you may have none to pay:
hills, if not totally indifferent
(and, of course, they are) communicate
by abrupt concretions, not words:
500I would rather be communicated with
with words, especially since hills
don’t have any, and their concretions
are roughish
10
don’t go on about it: put your mind
505on love, and let havoc strew its
detritus where it will: it will:
but let that go: fix your beam to
love, which everything befalls and
so little outlasts: learning much
510you open up realms to know, but who
knows little knows little to know:
I had to weewee but in the bathroom
I said, is there no weewee in the
weewee-er, but it was because first
515thing in the morning a colonic, but, but,
bolus of wind gathered through the
night was shutting off the tube (or
tubes) so I just had to concentrate
like hell but one drop led to another
_________
520till a tinkle made plenty of room
for the bolus and then everything
eased: later, during a fast walk
the bolus stirred free, too, and
then, of course, I felt fine: how
525are things doing: they are going to
change: how will things get: on
the whole, worse, or in the hole,
better: past the worst, things
cannot be bettered: when life is
530sweetest it’s scariest because it
could go by—it seems to go so
fast—or end: but a great benefit
of misery is that while one might
endure it, one need not cherish
535keeping it: funny balances pop up:
one thing certain is the overall
effect: all balances end in perfect
zeros: well, with the exception that
some zeros are bigger than others:
540when one black hole moves in upon
another (or they mutually collide)
it has been discovered by supercomputers
working in tandem that the hole gets
bigger (twice as big?): I think a
545second grader could have told them
_________
that 1 plus 1 is (or are) 2: I’ve
known 3-year-olds to do it: babes
in the woods:
11
the man four-legged with arm braces
550isn’t there anymore, and the lady
too fat to wobble her knees past
each other, where was she, and Mrs.
Fox, a decisive sharp lady with a
constant near-smile and a fine-lady
555accent, where will her like be found
again, here by the waters of the
Inlet, the boats’ reflections too
glassy to bob, the gulls crying
downward swoops, the ducks flicking,
560drawing those huge wedges of
ripples behind them: but here is a
young man and woman holding hands,
looking at the vegetables as from
another planet, she with a bottom
565broad & warm for planting, his
schlong adequate to bed the
deepest seed, and the black dog
licks the baby’s face, the stroller
bumping to the plank cracks:
570even where the air is empty it is
filled with space and sunlight,
the jabber of buyers and sellers:
_________
those who miss the missing will soon
be missing: Mrs. Fox, are you gone,
575or do you wait somewhere in a nursing
home and someone else is preparing
your potatoes, mashing them maybe
when they are already cold: are
you healing, may you return, will we
580see you again: we hardly knew you,
still now we realize we loved you,
your face set with a smile, your
quick movements, your choice salad
leaves: the market will leave the
585shoreline, the giant poplar will
give up more than its leaves, the
ladybugs all frigging this morning
on the green plant or weed will have
to shop this strange place for
590the needed damp: the wind almost
totally missing will show up somewhere
else and sing a different song or
maybe the one known here heretofore
12
do things close up or close down:
595flowers merely close? markets close
one way or the other but not both ways,
maybe neither: knitting knits up
“the raveled sleeve of care” and life
closes up or down depending among
_________
600other things on your attitude: so
much for my attitude: the trouble
with optimism is you have to be
optimistic before you can be more so:
I’ve heard that the greatest novelists
605in all languages were not good writers:
is that what guarantees Stevens’s
greatness: freshpersons confused by
so heavenly a daze would be dismissed
from my classroom: but great persons
610need not apply the rules of rubes:
neans (neanderthals)—those ruddy,
brutish, flamboyant little breezers:
nice to have a nest of them in the
basement for quick service but not if
615first thing you know they’re in yr
wife’s suite: stocky, they’re tough
to kill: but tout de suite,
cro-magnon with an elephant tusk cd
do away with them, outreaching: I
620wish we had them here: I would chain
them up in the basement when I didn’t
need them so they couldn’t get to
my sweetie-pie: I guess the women
were a little hairier: I wouldn’t
625mind some light chest hai
r about
_________
the bases of their boobs: what
afterdinner treats to call the ladies
up the stairs to put out the cigars:
you can’t have everything; why not
630just concentrate on what you want:
should you miss a trick or trick a
miss: direction imbalances: doesn’t
it make hills rise up behind you,
pressing you up into the open, to
635think that the fathers amounted (!)