by A. R. Ammons
springs light forth and no dark trench
invites you in, so where is the exploratory root to
fix, where do the stakes that angle up the
3250spread stand off: if you can’t get going you
might as well get gone, goodbuddy:
the snake dangled from the
woods of his loins and, tempted,
she offered herself,
3255and the snake rose to the sweet
fruit of that occasion,
after which millstones of
labor and kids-to-raise swung
from their necks, and they
3260awoke way outside of paradise. . . .
there are those who think it okay to be the
way they are: this conclusion has never
reached me, nor have I ever it: not even this
plan, this possibility: I bring you one—
3265who?—dragging himself behind: up front
moral conflict, chicanery, sleaze, and
shtick ruffle the terrain, while there, in
the rear, oh-oh the unprotected, uniform self,
clear, dumb, whispers a single
3270word: counter that with all this talk: how
tiny the seed can be whose pulp is the world:
(I should never criticize anyone because—
_________
so there be no loss—I glue the fault to
myself): there is, there are, there be: there
3275is the chance that: it is this that: wuz wuz
if I am never to ease into the fame
groove, I must at least secure the virtues of oddity:
should a pip squeak: or should
one wrap the whole world round in a film of
3280disbelief and swallow it: the crow convention
in the tall trees downslope yesterday (big-berry
boluses) was somewhat unsettled, shifty, and
quarrelsome: sudden callers would pitch into
breezes and round back to a new perch: two
3285would slice downward in an aggressive pairing
disagreeable wing-flickerers would lift and
relight—250 of them altogether and once or
twice they all lifted off at once
downwind like a loose cloud: and then by
3290twilight, unnoticed, they’d left the trees
picked clean: what sort of meeting was it:
was the whole genetic neighborhood assembled
to see and be seen: were the early stages of
mate selection under way: will they pair off &
3295square off, now: it’s 10 March: the redbird
has been whistling and chipping since mid-
_________
February: small, bud-feeding birds have
cheeped and sat still, fluffing themselves as
in an adorning mirror: how do the birds know
3300what to do, what it’s for, where to build, how
to care: how does the butterfly, bulged out
of the chrysalis, know what to do, having
been nothing but a worm: it is a mystery:
but no more a mystery than that I have a
3305planet to sit on while I type this: that
there is a mystery there, son: shore is: if
you take anything seriously, you’re a fool,
and a fool if you don’t: wherein,
then, is one to be wise: ’tis wise to be
3310foolish and foolish to be wise: leant over,
scrambling, searching for the last years, one
goes into a pixie dance at the lunatic poetry,
the wooden structure wrapped in butcher paper
meant to save one from death but, alas, it
3315was but a painted show that careens and crashes:
hark, here goes the squeaky thing again. . . .
68
hang on—oh, hang on—to our frailty, oh,
don’t lose hope: the brain will be improved:
scrawny bits will be fiddled free: where the
3320bear used to roam inward, fear will otherwise
_________
be focused (or dispersed): the deadly ambush
of the toothless tiger will no longer sanction
alarm: we’ll get our hopes together: we’ll
make it all up ourselves: we’ll outtake the
3325IRS, confront the diagnosis, assuage the shunned
lover: we’ll demark a height we could scramble
into the emptiness of: we’ll find some place
to go not round and round: oh, look upon the
look of the bodhisattva waylaying wayfarers
3330with enlightenment: or if that doesn’t work,
we’ll invent endurances, anxieties, tests,
losses anew to keep our souls sober and gravid
with metaphysics: hark: we will go one way
or the other or plow out a median: hang on,
3335or let go: dissolve with ease or resist and
spit: just think: if I’d stayed on the farm
I’d be a happy holy roller: instead of this
smart boy: this shaken isolate, this drained
discard, this dust bit, too disconnected to
3340settle, this comical comer touching down
here and there on a surface too hot to stick
with: but, unrolled, I still call on the Lord:
I do: I say, like now, Lord, I just discovered
there’s something to ask for besides to stay
3345here: not that I’m asking: and not that
You’re (necessarily) there: but if not, why
_________
You’re my Top Wishbone, my #1 Wishing Well:
You’re my Everything: and my everything is
nowhere near all there is: what shitty talk:
3350I phoned my sister (there’s only one, now)
last night: she lives in NC where clear
skies (which we didn’t have here) enabled her
to see the blue-blur comet: she said you could
tell it wasn’t a star: blue: said it was
3355over by the Dipper handle: I don’t
like the close-by of these things:
and the unlit ones, the asteroids: I don’t
care for them: it’s the rocky mindlessness
shining in high speed: the pitching roll:
3360the possible pelt of the big landing: I don’t
like things that “show up”: suddenly, I mean:
and we with no units in outer space to
misdirect them: we’re like some beaded braid of
aphids and some animal comes along and eats
3365the leaf: so long, dear ones: and what
becomes of Mozart then, I ask you: and are
mathematics (the several kinds) destroyed: is
mathematics then something that isn’t: I love
so many people (and most women even more)—but
3370I don’t say anything: not a word: where, I
would like to know, would that get them: tits
to woo, clits to consider, floral warmth,
_________
what’s not to love: desertion, withdrawal,
blame, responsibility, child support: hey:
3375with women there are fewer things to
play with but more to be in
69
I confess my confessions never concern the
truth: I confess for dramatic
substance by which I hope, like Shakespeare,
3380to entertain you from distraction: I am so
pure, so to speak, that I feel at home mostly,
as you may have heard, in the severely empty
heights, way up there, just coasting over
content: you may be sure if any nipples are
3385lipped or clits nipped, it will be in the same
way Shakespeare shakes Dick III out on the
stage, a wonder: I am not, h
owever, much for
the wine of life, let’s say, as is WS: I am
not for blood, let and loved: I confess that
3390I have not yet seen a robin (24Mar): others
have: I confess that trying to lose weight
disestablishes me psychologically: but I wd
not present you with murders, mummies,
and marriages: that is grown up stuff: I’m
3395sorry: I must just see if the pond will dry
up: and weep for the squirmers in the oily
_________
leavings: I must not proceed out upon the
stage and chop anybody’s head off, though
there are a few people I wouldn’t mind jeering
3400half to death: S. didn’t really care, as I
don’t either, about any of that “content”: he
just wanted to squeeze the syllables and feel
them slide: oh, he wanted to hear the truth,
that is, the accuracy with which the syllables
3405slit the throat: the way a Hail Mary arcs the
field and lands accurately in the fleet hand:
all this is true, and lies keep it bright
70
no use planning for the future if you’re not
planning on a future, or not much of one:
3410rib-it, rib-it: the money you lavish plowing
through the death facilities would have looked
good as wine and roses: early wine, though,
is bought with slender money: and as for
roses, choose the wild: well, it’s Easter
3415morning right now, with a nor’easter,
out-of-whack, whipper-jawed, eight-inch dump
load of snow on the ground, and it, as they
say, agoing to snow: surprise, surprise!
hardly anything so far rose compared to what
_________
3420fell: an illustrious, time-consuming irregularity,
a dingbat of a dumbball, a porous containment,
an outsized scrunch, well, a parfait miracle!
an appropriate misalignment, a straight line,
limp, a wonder to be told: sometimes, perhaps
3425often, people need only be outside the
normalcy of perception to be original: they
may be as dumb as the next one but they are
noticeably so: painters, for example, who
don’t understand that the bottom of the picture
3430represents the ground don’t know where the
people in the picture should seed the corn:
a brilliant piece of consequence (which, as
Johnson says, is not the same thing as
subsequence): more learned than I let on, I’m
3435less creative than I should be: but I’m at
least as creative as notice so far has noted:
my entire life, stacked up behind me, seems
sad: does yours: I often wonder if other
people recall joy: I recall that there was
3440joy but the recall is sad: what a small,
spine-skinny, creepy little piece of
ransacked misery I was, day in and day out:
I turned every bright tomorrow into yesterday’s
grief: maybe any day used up is worsened by
3445no longer residing potential in the future:
_________
the hope of copulation turns into a lack of
hope of copulation: somewhere in between,
tho, a rusty lode swims free, a momentary stay
against profusion: so that’s what it’s all
3450about, just now, that just went by: oops: a
dip in the dance, a leg underneath, a horse
collar on the sheep: snickering at the funeral,
laughing at the defloration: I know not what
course others may take but I’m for run-over
3455stationwagons
HELL IS ON WHEELS AGAIN
71
it is so much easier to become known by doing
bad than doing good: shoot
a president, derail a train (killing several
3460unexpectant people), bomb a plane or big bldg,
kill, sodomize, dismember, and cannibalize a
string of people and the pressure on notability
will build up: but try to improve people’s
morals (preachers) or instruct them in knowledge
3465(teachers) and the news will spread slowly:
of course, consequences vary: for the bad
there is a lifetime of retirement (with
study and physical exercise) guaranteed: the
good sink away into the inadequacies of Social
3470Security: for there is an hierarchy among
_________
criminals: get a parking ticket and the devil
is to pay: open up with a repeater in a crowd
and you get a private escort and suite: those
who do important things are important: the
3475rest is left over: the old fat man at the Easter
brunch said to the taller old fat man, my
bowling days are done: probably, his balling
days are done, too: the old have time to mull
things over or maul things over, depending on
3480the history: but should one enter into the
coral-fan immediacy of the present, into the
skinny filaments of ice with thaws coming:
should one hold back from his time, cowering
in long-range views: the tragic commitment to
3485now, should it be urged: should I push my way
all the way out to the periphery of definition:
out to where the thinning is mist, the risk
high, the taste keen, the present drawn forward
and backward into itself, now, just now, just
3490now:
THERE ARE PLENTY OF SEATS UP FRONT
72
I tell my poor pitiful graduating MFA poets to
cast a hundred résumés out upon the environment
_________
and maybe one bread source will be returned to
3495them: (fellow says he doesn’t mean any harm
probably knows he’s doing some): (I’d rather
be a misery than a miss): the man from
Audubon is coming, to profile, defile, or maybe
just file me: I must think what my meditations
3500will surround: first, we artificialize nature
then we naturalize artifice: oh, when I do
come on close to my nearest native thoughts,
my dearest figures and feelings, I can’t bear
the trampling out through keys into trolloped
3505letterings what others might snicker with or
at and I, with my floundering ineptitude, might
only precisely debase: hark, indeed: I sidle
off into the peripheries where speech may be
bluffs, and echoes may have mixed with woods
3510and brooks their recollections: I can’t tell
you what I care about: I care too much: can
you listen around the edges a little, if you
care, and take up anything you find and want
as yours : because I feed in the periphery to
3515secrete the kernel, I have an abundance to
give without end, because, because it opens to
the world and drifts back away to it: so you
can know nothing, I tell you everything:
but everything may surround islands firm enough
_________
3520to land on or lights strong enough to make a