by A. R. Ammons
through use gave me in time one nice
looking thing, if I must say so myself:
really nice: I mean, perfect: not
quite as big as wished but nevertheless
2605a considerable consideration: I
wouldn’t take anything for it and
wouldn’t have then, either, grandma
_________
or not: it worked out fine: this
is probably the beginning of my
2610confessional phase: you see, I am
just as lowdown good for nothing as
you are, maybe lower: I’m so lowdown
you’ll feel great thinking you’ve
edged me out: go ahead: one
2615thing you don’t get in the movies,
porn flicks, girlies is the smell:
yep: smell-free sex: in fact, you
get no sex at all, just head fucking:
I do not complain: you’d be surprised
2620how little something can be and be
better than nothing: and there are
notions sometimes as persuasive as
the flesh (and less smelly): but it
is degrading to think of sex as the
2625flesh because in true love it is the
spirit that connects, and the feelings
are divine, tending toward the sacred
and they generate children, sweet
little innocents in a sense:
54
2630in this life if you scramble into a high
place you have to fall out (of a high
_________
place) but from a low place
you don’t have far to fall: in either
case you hit the ground, but in one
2635case it takes longer and
you hit harder: the difference,
already noted, noticeable:
old molly hare
whacha doin there
2640runnin thoo the cotton patch
hard as you can tear
old molly hare
whacha doin there
runnin thoo the cotton patch
2645fartin like a bear
I don’t know who holds the copyright
on that: my father used to sing it:
a peanut is a pea, not a nut: and
the difference between a watermelon
2650and a sweet pee is, you
recall, twenty minutes: other
names for peanuts are groundpeas and
penders: also, if you slip into a
low place, you haven’t had far to
2655climb: arch up: an undistinguished placing
conforms more nearly to the reality
principle: the distinction that
_________
lifts you above the fortunate
attracts bullets and clay-makers
2660and money whose fluidity dissolves
centers: lie (lay) low: frugality puts
you above others (and comfortably
below your resources) but interests
few: hardly anyone resents or desires
2665frugality
55
if I say I did it, did I do it or
did someone else do or say he did it
or did I imagine I did it or that
someone else did: or did someone
2670say he heard someone else say he did
it: I take the pieces of action where
I find them: judge them by the
curvatures of their unfoldings, by
the reasonableness of their scripture:
2675it matters importantly who something
happens to, I know you know, and
if something was done, it can mean
a lot if you or I did it: so don’t
get me wrong: sometimes I did what
2680I say I did—if memory serves,
memory filtered through by invention
_________
and displacement: responsibility
bears where it can be placed: so,
oh, yes, I stick with a sort of
2685reality: but let the writer go:
let reality come true if it can at
the center of his fictions: let his
dreams be as if histories: let what
went before come after: but I didn’t
2690do it, I didn’t do it, they cry,
sometimes until they gurgle in the
rope or splatter the blade—and
sometimes, what’s more, they didn’t
do it: mostly, they did: some that
2695did it laugh all the way home: it’s
hard to distribute justice fairly:
injustice happens: money talks
56
one good thing about being too late
is like too late to worry: it’s too
2700late for me to worry about making real
money or getting to be well known or being
loved: another good thing is by the
time it’s too late to worry, one has
accumulated enough pickings, shreds,
2705passing fancies, busted hopes to lie
_________
down in, enjoying the drowsy
disengagement of incompletions,
blocked adjacencies, and discontinuities:
what the hell: what was
2710there ever to have won anyhow: an
hour of sun: a leaf gliding toward
a brook: a pussy hair behind your
ear: can’t you just imagine what
sunlight does to the high polish of
2715a high executive suite, a slice of
late light cutting across the carpet:
it’s almost better to have somebody
to have nothing with than have
nobody to have something with: the
2720value of things slides: Bill
Gates probably can sit among
windows and feel shades, nothing
in the world his money can’t cheapen:
whereas the hungry child seeing the
2725dipper spill into his bowl knows
the world’s dark deliciousness: you
can die starved from too much as from
too little but let’s vote
precautionarily for too much
2730fall is here: crows are up in the air,
like leaves: they arouse
_________
clusters of argument, squalling out
quick turns and dipping fluttery as
if shot: the wind loosens crows and leaves,
2735I mean, and nuts hit the
ground and water jiggles in the brooks again:
do you care for those tightly woven,
gutter-rutted, stone-thick, unutterable
poems artifice sets up
2740to stall the mind: well,
I often do: overdone, it gets funny
though: a shuttle scuttle
57
stars, too, are often twinkle-eyed
with tears and their after-midnight
2745lights shine through windows, lights
lasting till dawn’s rising voltage
puts them out: brothers try to
commit—or do—suicide, or sisters
waste away with eating disorders:
2750wouldn’t it be nice if the troubles
of the world spared someone: then
we’d have miraculous ones to look on
in happy disbelief: husky ball
players lose their touch or endorsers
2755pale away: and the general gravel
of the cosmos, no one even notes
_________
what becomes of that: only stars
give point lit high enough for us to
see the widespread evenness of
2760disaster: of course, of course,
there are thrills and kicks along the
way: and stars illumin
ate those,
too: we let stars get away with
plenty of roughage because we do
2765appreciate this focus: in their
lives we see writ large hilarity &
happenstance out of control, as with
us: and so we do submit our wishes,
our longings that rise into
2770recedings beyond stars to local dust
in a street sweeper: we nestle and
nudge till we get down: we dicker
with our own dicks and G’s and sip
the sweet readout of difference
2775into nothingness: we thank our
lucky stars for their help, but ever
more we thank our unlucky for the
low, low rhythm that holds the world
together, apparently
58
2780you dragass around: you know you’re
on empty: the light has gone out on
your vowels, blue-lit with hallucination:
the slick has dried on your rhythms:
the pulp of your poetry has drained
2785juice-clear, prose having
decided what’s to become of everything:
it’s like, well, if, like, you pull
the wings off a gnat, you have a nit
or nittwit: but, of course, keeping
2790on is the only thing to keep: stop,
you sink through: imagine you can
knock up a knockout, or knock a
knockout up: redress and re-dress
the backdrop: though it’s neutral,
2795breezes fan, snakes strike: but it’s
neutral: project upon it filmed
rights: play or play with your
piano: I have the dominant gene that
curls my tongue: the
2800trouble is that it then looks
like a sow cunt: I look in the
mirror and think had I a boar’s
needledick I’d do it to myself in the
_________
slitified tongue: this enables me
2805to project recessiveness and “get”
the echo of mixed emotions: (the
major macroeconomic is that more
people sweat a raise than raise a
sweat): easy reversals lead
2810to wisdom: the great practitioners
on Wall Street take a different
tack, a take tack, no, I mean: for
example, you run to the computer
every day and buy and sell and lose
2815your money, whereas someone takes
the long view, does nothing, and
gets rich: also lives long because
his belly is not entangled, just full:
takes all kinds: you be the kind
2820not already taken: be doing something
excusable, like for mankind or the
arts, and under that shield get rich,
be greedy, don’t look greedy: this
is really good advice, coming from a
2825skeptic: who taketh up poetry picketh
up an unemployment form:
poetry’s the wealth poverty
_________
buys: some of the wealthy have bought
poetry but were poor in spirit or
2830their parents sucked and they learned
to: the great thing about brooks is
that water moves like jaguars and
gazelles but is dead: the dead unless
ruffled by worms don’t move and dead
2835impounded water except for a nibbling
fish or two doesn’t move: but water
which is like stone, dead, dances and
sprays, flashes and dives like life:
and what is so good is it is immortal,
2840immortally dead forever so it can
keep on forever going away and coming
back, a great action at no expense
to life, the sun an engine long-dwelt
in the heavens: but not a dweller:
2845just the spirit of motion animates
water: it glistens: we are ourselves
pools in a long brook: husked, we
glisten, too, glisten and glisten
59
we’ll just be here while we’re here
2850and then we’ll just be gone: things
will appear uninterrupted either way:
while we’re here the figure we cut
_________
will be as if vacant, and when we go
the cutout we left will cave in on
2855itself: alas, but still, still
we cry—do we exactly understand
that this was the way it had to be
(yes, of course) or is this a trick
maggots, too, fall for: what are the
2860maggots for maggots: dinky little
molds and bacteria: no, nematodes:
some kind of flat worms: something
tiny that squirms: maggots, tho,
mostly—as we do not—turn into
2865something else, flies, you know, with
wings: that’s probably where we got
the idea of angels from: we’ll fly
away or flies will fly away with us
or seed us with fly seed that turn
2870into little blunt-ended nuzzlers:
a meditation like this is somewhat
melancholy: hopes of setting a bit
of stuff aside out of the round are
founded like other hopes on hope: we
2875pour in the formaldehyde and brick
bodies up tight from rain and stuff
and more stuff but stuff happens and
earthquakes and volcanoes and cutting
_________
floods grab stuff back into the swim
2880and motion cannot be prevented from
getting back whatever stalled in it
a “moment”: our white wings will
catch updrafts and we’ll float about
effortlessly as vultures but have
2885trouble pitching in trees, clumsy
brogans no adaptation for chicken
feet: we’ll land flatfooted on rims
of the deepest canyons and we’ll
pitch off into the air: we’ll sing
2890and glide touching wingtips and just
keep doing that: I suppose: how
can leftover things keep building
up and not deprive the circulations
of their soup: alas, it is all made
2895right: I’m terribly sorry: it is
made right
60
it’s a brisk, bright fall day and
from these two campus chycks passing
by, I hear, “I’m always so uncomfortable
2900in my winter clothes.” what do you
make of that: I’m always sort of
snuggled up in mine: it’s the winter
_________
outside that feels uncomfortable:
but they’re thinking ahead (they’re
2905young; looking ahead to discomfort
isn’t as uncomfortable for them as it is for
me, say): but is she more comfortable
in fall clothes: if so, even more so
in summer clothes: how comfortable
2910would she be in nothing: if there
is nothing in the heights but nothing
I suppose we can dismantle the arcs
and get down: hello, folks, here
we are down here with the pills and
2915pressures, shoe polishes and handsaws,
leaking faucets, and TV shows: our
longest view is to the next meal,
sex event, pay day, job: what,
what is certain, not to mention
2920certain to last: what, is there
yesterday’s pie and tomorrow’s pie
but no
pie today (the man said,
whoever the man was): curiously,
it’s down here where there are so
2925many things that there’s so little
to say, whereas the heights, which
hold nothing, conjure inexhaustible
inquiry and dream: plenty to think
_________
about: sidled aside, I shuffled
2930about for anything that might do: