The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2
Page 42
to not quite so much? are you
forgiving of the fathers that they
didn’t create just evil (as you
might have)—whereas some of you
640are impatient that all wasn’t
created good! alas, dealing with
the fathers is a strong suit:
company chit chat keeps chitchat
cheap
13
645the spirit is universal and without
identity: its habitations, singular
and unreproducible, become slush:
slush and spirit make
_________
the worlds: they have a flare for
650invention: they make one of each,
even when they make millions of each:
it is therefore impossible for one
thing to become another, identity
on the one hand one and on the other
655unique: if you have arrived with the
pattern and motion to be in the world
then you must leave it: there will
be no need for your like again: I
overheard my neighbor, speaking to
660his gardener-helper, say that he
overheard his father say to someone,
possibly a gardener—“The axe creates
more beauty than the spade”: I didn’t
hear my neighbor comment on this, but
665I supposed it meant—pruning beats
planting: the spade, though, is also
associated with plantings of another
kind which, doing away with old
depleted things, may be another kind
670of pruning (improving the beauty of
the world by another kind of deletion):
well, anything inquired into gets
mixed up: surface shifts sift out
beautiful language best: it is the
_________
675motion not the mark tells: (if I
tried to explain that you wouldn’t
find it so easy:) Socrates destroyed
worlds looking for definition: he
found none: by the time such narrowing
680locates a carcass, the carcass has
no stomach for meaning: by the time
anything gets that narrow, little
is in it: what is beauty:
you don’t know, don’t ask: I could
685say it is when your pecker rises:
ask your fucking pecker what it
thinks: and beat it bad till it
spits at you: if it spits, though,
it may be more evidence of the
690same thing: nothing having been
explained in 2500 years, we best look
to some other mode of explanation: counting
on the wrist is a classic: smelling
bad turns you away: touching someone
695creates belief: the solid world eats
and shifts, I mean, shits, runs in
and out of waves, plays pinochle,
and never says a word: words, their
world lost, the wind sweeps up after:
700no dust left, the wind
_________
dies: a disappeared language never
was, never can be, exists nowhere:
14
I struggle on in this pointless war:
I can’t get the rhythms across the
705page: I’m narrowed, cramped, sliced
up, pinched between the shoulder blades,
the words spilling off the edge: a
strip war has to be the least
significant of man’s endeavors, or
710even woman’s: but only insignificance
will carry the right significance:
anything worth doing is not worth
doing: I’m just going to fight it
out with these lines, especially
715since it’s not much of a fight and
the margins are clearly the winners:
Sam Elliott, a destitute widower with
pretensions to learning, lived in a
shack on our farm for a time with his
720children—Amaretha, Hessie, Dessie,
Tressie, Lessie Lee, Essie Neater,
Corbett (Corbett’s peter?), Metha
May, and Letha: we had nothing: they
had less: one day, Lessie Lee sat
_________
725down in the cabbage patch and ate a
whole head because there was nothing
else: raw: I felt pitiful as she
peeled off the squidgy leaves and crunched
them in: they used to boil the
730coffee grounds until they were
rust: I remember one day we
were laying logs by the tobacco
bed so as to spread canvas across
the young plants, when Mr. Elliott
735said we would have to “undermine”
the log! can you imagine such a
word: we had never heard anything
so sweet and distinguished: also,
one day he said to his lazy (starved)
740children, you can rest when you’re
dead: well, I suppose so: meanwhile
he had such a bad cold, he would lean
over and squeeze a fountain of clear
water out of his nose: they say
745you’re supposed to ignore these
aggravations, but I declare I’ve
never known anything more interesting:
then one day Sam and I were coming
back from somewhere in the mule and
750wagon (I was sitting in the back with
_________
my feet hanging out) when Sam asked
me if I knew if Corbett had ever had
any: well, I just muttered: Mr. Sam
seemed pleased at the prospect, tho:
755he was on to nature’s cycles: I was
way too small: young, I mean: Sam
Elliott is dead and gone: I guess
not much is missing in some quarters
15
money, enhancing the fluency of negotiation,
760has no substance of its own: it
is just medium, action, the flow by
which substances are exchanged,
the system by which desire seeks the
most nearly total and “spiritual”
765negotiation between wish and wished-for:
money transmits, transforms, “stands
for,” catalyzes—and yet is nothing
in itself, an airy agreement between
desirers, valueless when no longer
770valued, iconic and flat when no longer
current: language operates the same
way: it holds its consistences,
designations, forms, economies in
currencies, in motions: let fall
_________
775from negotiation, language disappears
as languages have often done, without
any lasting effect to the material
world—the language had added
nothing to and taken nothing from the
780economy whose exchanges it had
sustained: write a poem about boulders
or feathers and the net weight of the
world is unchanged: riffle a manuscript
of poems into the sea—one, let’s
785say, containing much wisdom of human
experience—and the manuscript is
lost, the ink slides free, returning
as much weight to the world as it had
taken from it:
16
790I don’t think things go round and
round and come out zero (o), do
you: unless that o is a planet:
seems like there’s been no material
advantage to the swirl so far: we
795pick up
sky detritus, and sometimes
it isn’t detritus, if you get my
drift: take that mile-wide hole in
Arizona, and take the blurp when by
the addition of something large, we
_________
800lost the moon: let’s not get excited:
I do think, though, we’ve hit on the
reason for a lot of stuff: on the
planet, if anything moves it moves
something else, often backwards:
805that scrambles directions so when you
go out to do good, you may get your
boots crusty with evil: and whereas
if you see a guy steal a loaf of
bread, you may later see his babies
810chewing (a remarkable mix): that wd
be nice: or if you meet a nice guy
it may be defensive innocence hides
from him his furies: if he’s innocent
all the way through, he may be boring
815as hell or clear as water: have you
ever tried to isolate the cause of,
say, yeast risings or which seed or
nut riles your diverticulum: I’ve
wondered what I’m guilty of and
820whether an ingredient of my own
brought about the pileup: or there
was the time I recommended to Aunt
Laura that she take a hike, and she
never came back, walking: it’s all
825because of the mixture, a blur: an
_________
elixir exists somewhere, everybody
knows it: but get it out and where
from: a pure thing, an identifiable
agent, a surefire, not recipe,
830element: well, thank the Lord for
the miasma: when we get around to
damning ourselves or somebody else,
let us fumble, feint, squirm, and
fume: if it’s clear, let us be
835uncertain why: let us be barely able
to budge off 49–51: sometimes
there doesn’t seem to be enough life
left to bother with: that thought
should immediately be displaced by a
840better one: life is life, if precious,
precious throughout: add another
pig to the trough, another one goes
off the end: go straight, you bump
into duplicity and deceit: divorce
845(bad) turned into divorce (good):
the straight is crooked and the
crooked, straight: go, boy
17
where do poems come from: you may
want to know: have you ever wondered:
_________
850do you care about the baby, not the
fetus: if you’re like many people
you don’t care about the poem, so why
care where it comes from, when you
mostly do care about babies and still
855would just as soon skip the phylogeny:
wonder which comes first, the motion
of feeling, or the event, perception,
connection: oceanward, you could
say that a rift of motion starts in
860the doldrums, forms a progression,
but you can’t derive what it derived
from: what unsettled a bit of air:
was it air’s own weight, a change of
temperature and buoyancy, or did a
865wing slice through, or a meteor, or
surely not a neutrino, so tiny: so
what causes anything to start: when
is the beginning of anything, all
beginnings begun: well, that’s it:
870there’s a currency of feeling and it
flows as unformed, if noticeable, as
a drive, and describes a form of
itself, or else its energy picks up
some body here or there and marries
875itself to that, creating narrative:
_________
motion, going from here to there,
describes a swerve or arc or salience
and that is form: that is the seed
of form, born in the very bosom of
880its substance, which is motion: next
to that, tell me what you think of
a sonnet or some fucking cookie-cutter:
I mustn’t become high-handed: I’m
more miserable than most anybody I
885know, so don’t take after me: I’m
okay when I’m typing like this, tho:
I’m in motion and the worm I am
extruding has a long wiggle: it
seems to me as I look about that I
890know some things well: but they are
about nothing: there is no seedcorn,
there are no potato eyes in my stuff:
my poems come out of a little tug of
rift in an oceanic doldrum: it’s a
895tiny little ship, an airship: fog
could drown it, saturate its jib:
who could get to Mars with that: if
I’m not to have a life, at least let
me tell you about it, that is, that
900I’m not having it: that will make
me nearly think I’m having it: imagine
_________
a life! of words: better than
nothing, better, better, bitter-bile
better: for what I meant was love:
905now, don’t blubber: poor comfort,
such poor comfort: twaddle:
18
I need to get a picture of what’s
going on: I’m not—only so far:
no one is: but something is, and I
910need a picture of it: a trace, a
spoor, an indication even that might
lead up to an eventual outline, or
in the grossest possibility, something
3-dimensional: a snapshot, really,
915before the actual flesh: garbage is
a socialized form: ground up in a
sophisticated, electrical machine,
it flows down the municipal pipes
to the county waste disposal plant
920and then out, here, into the waters
of the mighty Cayuga Lake: or else,
paper-sacked, it is set out by the
street in clever plastic, lid-lockable
big containers, and a big truck—
925driver and two footmen—passes by at
an approximately agreed-upon time
_________
each week, and the big compressor
blade packs the garbage in: but
litter, litter is without centrality:
930it is not budgeted, it flies in the
face of organization, it can be, and
is, dropped anywhere, item unrelated
to item, caught up into the wind or
down into ditch trenches: the central
935image of this poem is that it has no
mound gathering stuff up but strews
itself across a random plain randomly:
I don’t suppose the universe was
thrown away that way (do you suppose
940it was) and perhaps even litter is
governed by certain dynamics of flow
so that it is not truly free: a
heavy frost would keep paper down:
a hot day would dry water off
945cellophane: a fall of leaves could
lay some banana peelings to rest:
distribution has its own meeting
places: with litter perhaps the
central image is harder to find, made
950of subtler tendencies, harder to see,
a greater invention than a mere
locale: anarchic and anti-agglutinate,
_________
litter draws one into the resourc
es
of depth, matrix, and vector: one
955must learn new forms of containment
or else rehearse the resistances of
freedom
19
how big is a drop of water: how much
does it weigh: how big is a drop
960from a regular, domestic sewing needle
or from a pin or from the point
of a pencil: from the tip of the