by A. R. Ammons
something to do with taste: but I
1950can’t stand and look at him or her
all day because that would look
foolish and he or she would start to
notice, and nothing is really quite
easy in the world: I can’t even say
1955what I would stand and look at all
day: we are tied round with ties:
and lies: we are lie-tied and
tie-laid: the world is ashen with
flash and burn, desiring and desisting,
1960reveling and retching: why do people
not want things eased away instead of
wired to the highly charged: is the
disorganization of the languid so
scary: not, for me, as scary as the
1965crises of fear: tranquilized—oh,
that has been my missing paradise
so long, and its lack too long my
hell: with nothing, thank goodness,
to be miserable over, I’m miserable
1970over nothing: but it makes no difference
what becomes of me now because I’m already
become of: unless, of course, I could
_________
write a good line: I could spell out
my dream along a good line some beauty
1975might take a turn to, and then we
would be toe to toe on the floor,
the music swaying us and educating
our wishes and edging us toward the
closure that is our temporary but
1980essential solution: strip typing is
like strip mining: you peel the
surface off things shoving clutterment
downhill, heaping hunks, spewing
grit, filling cracks, riddling shale,
1985making news out of old geology:
massive millings: my strip typing
says little but can be understood:
whereas, many things so dense they’re
very meaningful are hard to know:
40
1990I guess it’s because of the downward
slide of everything towards entropy,
the momentum of the downglide, that
forms are like foam cast up onto
floats of pause: if this is not
1995true, I do not give a damn: I must
die: that is what unsettles me:
the reasonable/unreasonable dynamic
_________
of that, the popping up of bubbles
that pop: makes sense in the local
2000but why may I not dwell somewhere in
luxury besides heaven: material
tries to make it to eternity but
recycles, and spirit that forever
was forever is: forever, possibly,
2005because it isn’t anything; that is,
it’s nothing, or else it’s something
time doesn’t fool with: equilibrium
will not do what disequilibrium will
do, the slope, the values of the old
2010mill stream: then there’s the mill
pond to swim in, dark, diamond water,
so still, so deep, such summers! I
can tell you right now: I can figure
it out but still resist the figuration:
2015I feel like I would prefer not to
comply: but silly me, that’s because
I’ve forgotten how grateful one can
be for the permanent ease that does
not know itself: what a comfort,
2020that from here, there is a way out!
and as a boon addition, no way back:
it’s right, I suppose: I suppose it’s
right: right or wrong, we string
_________
along: talk is cheap: it’s the only
2025thing I could buy enough of to fill
up this tape: and talk is action,
and the mouth is an image, booboo:
the trees are still bent, downloaded
deep: white weight: more trees
2030have splintered and resplintered,
branches closing roads, whole trees
lying down, root-reared: naturally,
nature adds dearth to dearth, pure
calm holding the frail limbs sprung
2035as a bow under the evil wet: in
nature, nature brings rescue to the
rescue after every damn case has been
given up: then, slowly say, the
snow compacts to a risen degree and
2040a drop of water drops from the clump
and then another drop drops: sometimes the
trees are like people, they just
don’t have that much time: but it’s
beautiful, and tonight ice will come
2045back where water was: some people
move to Florida: others wouldn’t
think of it, think of it
41
the strong want to live on the edge
but they are so strong they can
2050seldom find an edge anywhere: while,
alas, the weak inhabit edges everywhere
and seek strength anywhere to pull
back away into safety: how sad
that what we have is not what we want
2055and what we want we can’t find: if
you say what you have to say then you
have nothing to say: therefore the
unsaid is the lens of observation &
what will not tell itself will not
2060be done with telling: stripping is
what I do, keeling to this band of
paper, a fleet rig on a round-the-world
and back-around-again: it is so
arrogant to say it is not important:
2065imagine the gall, asking to be known
for nothing, or to be known for having
the gall to ask to be known for nothing:
what I want is not something out of
something—fairly easy—but something
2070out of nothing: a difficult, primal
figure: in what was space made: if
_________
space closes up, what is left behind:
if this universe bloomed through some
integument from another universe,
2075where did that universe come from:
presence only annihilates these
troublesome questions: springs and
kangaroo rats and insect bites and
reed mats and dinosaur teeth: lots
2080of stuff, begun and ended over and
over, so that the loam of our lives
is a loam that was life, flesh from
flesh strangely begotten: flesh into
flesh, a soilure and a soil: but the
2085wonder of such infinite devising—
tadpole and caterpillar, mushrooms
and figs, mole rats and chimpanzees:
five million insects and only a few
white rhinoceros: ladybugs and plums:
2090the list lists it is so weighty:
just mud and information: enough
oohing and aahing: everything taking
and being taken—provender: the
lacewing fly, something’s meal: the great
2095quantity of things lies elsewhere
42
can you make nothing interesting:
what is the first thing you would
encounter on the first rim of nothing:
why, a smell: a kind of a smell:
2100that’s right: I reckon: smegma
afloat in the round of a bauble of
pussy piss: that is vulgar: that
is so vulgar: Wallace Stevens wd
never say anything like that: or
2105think it: or smell it: I do not see
how the technique of poetry could be
reduced fart
her than this: so this
must be the rim bounding nothing:
smegma, though, is probably populous
2110under the microscope, the dead paste
of epithelial cells would be a living
broil of carefully crafted life:
there must be something closer to
nothing than smegma—or even the
2115smell of smegma: think how complex
smell is: a single whole piece of
smegma, one part in a million parts,
capable of alerting nerve ends in,
you know, the nose: there you go:
_________
2120dragging in a prominent structure
already, a face fixture—oops, there
goes a face on a head on a body, no
we were going the other way: I tell
you, you better be ready to look
2125about before you find nothing, it
may not be so easy to find: people
always talking nothing, wonder
if they’ve ever seen any: we have
weather enough this morning without
2130a forecast: (snow midNov) the upper
branches of the great trees weightily
woggle: the birch bunch tips over
to the ground: the shrubbery skews
and splits: no birds sing: all is
2135closed: nothing is left uncanceled:
getting about is as much a hazard as
a hap: I’m trying to think of nothing
(the forecast is for four to eight
more inches) but even nothing has a
2140rim around it, which makes it a
something: still, somewhere within
that something is a “float” of
nothing, a kind of resilient blob
wandering strange: pure nothing: the
2145nothing right next to the rim might
_________
be something but not farther in toward
the central nothing: if you cut out
a specimen of that, you would have
a piece of nothing, but then the
2150“piece” would have to be entirely
mythical or it would be something
again: it’s hard to care about these
arduous ardors when the eggs are
nearly over, and the snowplow is due,
2155due and late: and branches
crisscross the street, bringing down
lines (O ye, in the future, can you
imagine, our landscapes (along our
streets and across our fields) are
2160strung with wires, phone, electric,
high-tension, so primitive!)
nature’s disasters trim nature up
shipshape (it is a ship): high wind
which we had last week cut dead wood
2165out of the trees, though it’s so
early in the season, the lilacs still
hold their leaves—so much worsening
the burdens—and today’s snow brings
down whole diseased or overextended
2170limbs, so the trees get skinny and
light, their catchments shrunk like
_________
sculptural wire: ocean-bottom
storms of lava make pretty islands:
cracking faults make room for oceans:
2175continent drifts into continent and
crinkles up razor-young peaks:
nervous mornings produce so much
speech: pacing helps, too: I am not
patient: actually, twigginess has
2180not been helpful for some of the
trees: really twiggy trees catch
heaps (and heaps) of snow and bend
way down till their branches crack
off or they pitch head first: on
2185the way to the campus a while ago,
I came upon a log across the road &
on the way back, a tree fell across
the road right in front of me, and
later on Highland a bushy branch hit
2190me right in the windshield: I said
to myself, if I don’t get on home!
everything now is in a still, white
suffering, an unloaded tension, I
mean, a tension in which the load
2195has not been un: and the tension
makes me tense: I don’t like to be
cooped up: I don’t have any Snowbound
_________
resources: my typewriter’s my only
outlet into this cramped-up strip:
2200I don’t get any easing away before a
margin cracks me stilted or forces me
back in on myself: when I use up
this tape, I’m not buying another:
this is a dot upon which what
2205has happened has happened
43
sometimes I get the feeling I’ve never
lived here at all, and 31 years seem
no more than nothing: I have to stop
and think, oh, yeah, there was the
2210kid, so much anguish over his allergy,
and there was the year we moved to
another house, and oh, yes, I remember
the lilies we planted near that
siberian elm, and there was the year
2215they made me a professor, and the
year, right in the middle of a long
poem, when I got blood poisoning from
an ingrown toenail not operated on
right: but a wave slices through,
2220canceling everything, and the space
with nothing to fill it shrinks and
_________
time collapses, so that nothing happened,
and I didn’t exist, and existence
itself seems like a wayward temporizing,
2225an illusion nonexistence sometimes
stumbles into: keep your mind open,
something might crawl in: which
reminds me of my greatest saying:
old poets never die, they just scrawl
2230away: and then I think of my friends
who may have longed for me, and I say
oh, I’ll be here the next time
around: alas, the next time will
not come next: so what am I to say
2235to friends who know I’m not here and
won’t be back: I’m sorry I missed
you guys: but even with the little
I know I loved you a lot, a lot more
than I said: our mountains here are
2240so old they’re hills: they’ve been
around around 300 million years but
indifference in all that time broke
itself only to wear them out: my
indifference is just like theirs: it
2245wipes itself clear: surely, I will have
another chance: surely, nothing is
let go till trouble free: when
_________
I come back I’m going to be there
every time: and then the wave that
2250comes to blank me out will be set
edgy and jiggling with my recalcitrance
and my consciousness will take on weight
44
every now and then I drop a bead of
rolled snot in the philodendron and
2255mold grabs it in the eagerest flare:
first thing you know it looks like
a hairy dead daddy longlegs: last month
I planted a piece of peeled apple in
there and several days went by before
2260a growth intensely green at the soil
level took it over: but then the
apple, weeks later, got too dried out to
nourish its vanishing, and the peak
part still stands shrunken but white and whole:
2265I should dry up
: stripping
down is like being worked over with
mold but, dry, one finds where form
finds everlasting: because usually
you know, spirit is temporalless:
2270throwing in a few new words & stuff:
_________
should have said timeless: but
everybody pronounces that: another
choice is to give one’s sweet water
to the undoing and not mock oneself