by A. R. Ammons
2275finally with permanences: the great
sharp-pointed aspiring stones one
sees in graveyards along the road,
well, one understands the grief and
loss and the great wishes, but, below,
2280the face has drifted into a twist
and the bones have soured sticky:
the unrollable foundations above
topped with a spire or flight of
angels are such a laugh: such a
2285big laugh: but then what a nice note
that is, life a big guffaw,
possibly, even, a celebrant guffaw,
possibly a word to us all: I hadn’t
meant to get off onto a happy
2290note, but life is just irrepressible
even in death: it all comes up
again and starts over: why give
a millennial hoot: the hills around
here are three hundred million years,
2295repeat, old: rather than see chimpanzees
in terms of ourselves, I would rather
_________
see ourselves in terms of chimpanzees:
rather: what a funny looking word
rather is: tah
45
2300will I will the will to go on—what?—
from here, where does going go, except
to gone? oh, I dream in this wise,
now, yes, yes, yes—images—the
body bent to the cane: some way I
2305may get away: below neutrality, the
ease of neutrality looks good, a
positive: we’ve had some rain,
dribbles at midnight, the rain pipes
thunking clocks: but the ground
2310is wet only two or three inches down:
below, summer’s drought persists:
not that many of these slate-slabbed
hills have more than 2 or 3 inches
of ground to wet: roots crickle the
2315stone granular: but no soil, loam:
when rains wash, they wash the grit
away: naked roots touch into pools
of unsoaking water mineral-enriched:
first frost is possible tonight:
_________
2320we’re peeling the last of the peaches:
the trees are smirched dry-red, frost
or no: tomatoes, you know, the vines
wilt right down, cold-bruised stems:
the seasons roll straight ahead,
2325swaggering from side to side, cold
to hot to cold to hot: time that
takes away every second it gives
goes straight, too: we are not in
keeping with its round bubbles or
2330animal balloons: though we see
ourselves too short to bend, look
how our figure 8 contains infinity:
our figure 8 Möbius keeps two sides
on a single side: don’t mess with
2335us: we know we’re doomed whichever
doom it is, here or there: our
cousins the gorillas, a sweet people,
I wonder what they know: their eyes
seem blurred like the eyes of our
2340anxious: have they peered through
too many leaves or eaten too many:
familial troops with big daddies:
too much submission to the shoulders
of the red stick? I’m sorry, I’m
2345sorry: I do not feel that obfuscation
_________
is a good cover for mystery: no,
mystery is what comes true at the
center of the perfectly clear: I
mean, all efforts at clarity having
2350failed, one succumbs to mystery:
but merely to screw something up, or
scribble over it, or substitute
something for it—that is perverse,
mere perversity: mere perversity
2355resulting in the unintelligible is
not mystery but a neat trick one is
not likely to get away with for long
46
the yellow leaves left on the
birch flip in the wind like
2360butterflies trying to pitch: when the
wind lulls they light, then dance
like frit in the sun when the
wind’s shiversome again: if you’re
fortunate enough to live as long as I’ve
2365lived, you may be as old as I am: awake
some mornings, I don’t know whether
to discharge a gun or an obligation
47
battalions of leaves routed by the
wind scurry to defeat: smegma flakes
2370off the chilled penis: a chipmunk
pauses to dampen a stone his own:
a robin or so left stands erect at
dusk, too stuffed with honeysuckle
berries and crickets to budge: so
2375the big surprise is, fall has come
and all the banal transitions are
running their changes: and what new
has one learned—why, that the leaves
that served have been dismissed, if
2380not torn, from the branches and by
this we learn that in falling we are
puzzled about what we took or gave:
did we just play the DNA through, if
we did: was there a high form we
2385shamelessly enhanced: was there a
current otherwise unannounced but
for a peppering of people: or did
nothing give a shit and we fell out
here the way a rock could appear in
2390the sky: whatever: taken a day at
a time, I can tell you the way the
_________
sun first tipped the treetops gold
this morning, and the way we found,
some of us, our dicks on waking hard,
2395and we so hungry and all—what a
great opportunity for roaring
exultation: but then, the ball can
whip a right angle out of the cup,
and where are you, where are you:
2400or nemesis riding a 60-year-old
memory can sweep through wiping the
the bark off your bushes: how did
I, for example, mistake this place
as a place for ease, when the place
2405itself shifts, boils, drowns, shakes
worse than a teenager: I guess if
you were to compare the two best
poets in the country, it would be
like comparing apples and bananas
48
2410missed by every movement, exile of
every glare-ridden trend, never the
tissue of any issue, I traipse to the
bookstore to see if I’ve arrived in
any index, not, notice, as a relevant
2415subject, but as a slur, since one’s
_________
hunger gets even down to that: no,
no: in Nature Writing, nothing:
nothing in poetics: unbeat: well,
I’ve proved Emerson unimaginably
2420wrong: one can live in one’s time,
and lucky for it, with no involvement
in its politics: I love the chicanery,
fraudulence, expedience, greed of
the political (read, human) world—
2425those allow, those qualities, for so
much invention, unprescribed variety
but my time line, such as it is,
shears the peaks off politicos’
peaks: I’m not in Nature Writing
2430because I’ve been too deep in nature
to notice: nobody noticed: oh, well,
it was enough to see: except on a
cold, windy, clear Sunday afternoon
with
not a damn thing doing: then
2435one’s heart longs to be noticeably
dismissed, at least: in the still
pond of nothingness, rock the boat
or there won’t be any waves: someday
I’m going to write on how Stevens
2440makes his be buzz: I am: scram:
49
if I don’t know what it is it could
be anything—a slue-footed, coned,
tail-bent galligarngion: so it is
helpful when words pinpoint, trimming
2445excess: this tape is so skinny: I
have to crack off the lines and roll
the trimmings back into the next line:
there is never enough room: the
lines have to digest something, pack
2450it down, shove stuff together: my
wife has a trimmings doctrine: she
thinks trimmings should be removed
from the premises: raked-up lawn
grass, leaves, dead branches, old
2455rose canes, squirrels’ walnut nibblings:
she doesn’t believe it’s right for
a red oak to have its leaves: she
doesn’t think anything should find a
way back into the ground: she doesn’t
2460want to wait for no “slow burning
of decay”—as Mr. Frost would say:
rake it up, she says, get the blanket
under it, pile it up by the road, let
them haul it off: mercy, I think,
_________
2465what the hell’s wrong with letting
a little natural stuff help hold the
hill together: or why not see if a
little loam can drift out of decay
into soil and regrowth: but, no, it
2470won’t do: rake it up, clean it out:
strike the v out of archive and you
have another archie: well, we just
finished driving to Chicago and back
and we’s tired: oh, yes, yes, yes,
2475we’s really tired: plumb tuckered:
50
life has left me beaten up and beat
down, yet, I confess, I am neither
beat, beaten, nor Beat: sorry to
disappoint you: I have every hope
2480still to turn into a decent, moral
creature: the sky’s broken but cold
this morning with a touch of rays
splintering through here and there,
little threads or gauzes of threads,
2485mixing with hanging currents of flurry,
bridal veils for the marriage of heaven
and earth: a glorious, cold, early
_________
winter morning, another beginning,
sweeter (and cooler) than the first
2490morning of mornings: who knows how
primal succeeding days can become:
some (many) through time have expressed
an interest in world dominion,
minions from software manufacturers
2495through all the stages of hardware,
bullets and shafts, even saintly
philosophers softened into gods: I
declare if I don’t think that may be
a good idea: what appeal from a
2500short, meaningless, jailed life should
one announce—a willingness to go
along and take it all or an arousing
desire to cast limitation aside,
greeting the unaccomplishable
2505unaccomplishingly, a work never done,
a surrender intimated only at the
setting out: hark: why buy in to
the world’s soothing controls: why
yield and smother: why the lying
2510silence: why not say, this is what
I want and never be without work in
not getting there: but puling
compliance, how sickening, sucking
_________
up to safety, behaving into honor!
2515ass kissers’ noses are in a crack,
their eyes abutting butts blindly:
whereas the bright face addresses
hills from the clear summit air of
mountains: ah, but the lowly, the
2520lowly, they seldom kill, they are
unthreatening, they are shining examples of
having less than we: are they not
innocently adorable: I am not beat:
to be beaten is not losing while it
2525loses beating
51
this summer the weeds, even, and
trees dried up and died: the mullein
on the back slope stalked out with
shriveled leaves and the little
2530flowers keeled over, the only way to
go: oh, this tight strip breaks my
rhythms, loosens my stable tables,
pours everything toward the middle
where it runs off, a streak: there
2535isn’t room enough to lay something
down flat: speaking of flat, the
only thing that recommends Ohio is
_________
that Indiana follows it, and the
only trouble with Indiana is that
2540Ohio is left over: out west from
here around Angelica, Cuba, Olean,
Salamanca, Bolivar, and Jamestown,
the reservoirs of the Alleganies and
the pools scooped out along built-up
2545roads have so retreated into themselves
that hardly a snitch of water remains
a heron can wet his toe in, and
the big empty bottoms have sprung up
a fur of grass: looks like a lawn:
2550the fish and things are nervous as
hell: the congestion, I mean, is
worse than traffic into Chicago, the
big limousine-type trucks thumping,
the double-exhausts over the cabs
2555chuffing black, the smell of roasted
coffee (just burnt gas) all
over perdition: what is there as
much fun as a trip:
52
breaking up the hang up hanging
2560awful in the mind, that is the procedure:
finding the form of the process, the
mode, how you go about dissolving
the knot (that burns your feelings)
a sort of lightered knot tar draws
2565out of, a knot that spits and pops:
fire’s a solvent: faster at times
than water or psychological breadth:
the form forms and if you’re empty
space only, the form is open
2570to artificial, say, irrational, say,
mad fixations that drop into your
bowl: arrange a full life or
the terror of emptiness will fill
emptiness with terror: love’s the
2575best filler but isn’t cheap and
anyway money can buy only a semblance:
if your forms aren’t full of love it
doesn’t matter what they’re full of:
I do the best I can and god, I suspect,
2580does the same: his plans allow for
the emergence of the unexpected and
attempt amends for the consequences:
I am in this way made in his image:
53
so here I am fist-diddling in the
2585poot-shanty when my grandmother
appears at the door—surprise!
surprise! she frowned (this is my
grandmother poem) and my sex education
was off to the races: well, there
2590were other problems, too: for example,
I found through exercise of my 11- or
12-year-old sexual rights that my
glans p
enis wasn’t free of the skin
which kept tearing a little from time
2595to time and getting sore: sex was
in those days a secret, something
that never happened: I lived with my
sore penis right through sunday school
with no one to tell about it to:
2600but it came loose all by itself and