The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  course by: it doesn’t matter if you end or

  begin with me but that you have a journey of

  your own: I’ll be the mirage the camel’s legs

  flicker in: or I’ll be the caw of the crow

  3525broken loose at night by wind and thunder:

  I’ll be around: I’ll be the bark you flatten

  your hand against as you lean a look into the

  grand Grand Canyon: be on your way (with me,

  with me) and I’ll have my way alone to myself

  3530with you: when my journey is done and I am

  gone on the other journey, earth’s, not mine,

  you will look back at my hollow meanderings and

  then know everything: after all, a

  trail of nothingness marks its way by cave and

  3535cliff, drop and steep, shore willow and fern:

  73

  no, I carry hods, I’m a sideloader, cement mixer:

  I deal in avoirdupois, millstones swing my perfect

  neck (low), I lumbersomely sway: I carry

  weight: but the tug of the encircling

  3540sings me to the storm drain: am I about to

  be or am I being moved by the waters: will

  the speed climb as the circles shrink: has most

  of my world gone on before me: is this it:

  _________

  is the voice of gravity calling up through

  3545the grill or grid or whatever it is: should

  I be turning around to cry goodbyes before

  I’m too busy whirling: alas, another,

  perhaps the original, hole “black as a pit,”

  nothing returns from: am I going down the

  3550drain: or am I out still, languid in the long

  curvings: (is one not born to delight in the

  presence thereof of that which is—or is

  spring pollen to bother one): is nothing

  sacred: all is: I mean, if a rattlesnake

  3555whirls out of the brushwork and hangs into you

  that is terrifyingly sacred: and when

  you have wintered with a dark dead rose, the

  springing of the dewy rose is sweetly sacred:

  in respect to the sacred, you should get

  3560out of the way of a loose log slipping down the

  hill, and watch it when chill turns the rain

  slick: if a high wind wrinkles the lake the

  sharp-lit ruffles are sacred: and when the

  lion snarls and bites in the ecstasy, that is

  3565the glory thereof: nothing, not a single

  thing, is secular: but beyond the fact that

  everything is sacred nothing whatever is to be

  made of it: we do not know whose machinery it

  is if it is anyone’s: is cum nasty: well,

  _________

  3570yes, but there are fire-threads in it that

  stitch together life: and what about the mean

  old egg: it comes looking: and it kills

  thousands for the one it can’t refuse, that

  won’t be refused, the raper of walls and

  3575chemical warfare: alas, the lean cry of the

  newborn dik the cheetah squeezes, isn’t that

  awful: but the cheetah lies down to her

  sucklings: the milk that flows is sacred: I

  suppose I could go on: it looks as if I could:

  3580in my last (and nearly first) review from

  England, it is observed that I am on automatic,

  good lord, is there so little to consider that

  it must be reconsidered: throw the abundance

  away: wipe it off, shove it over: we are

  3585without limits: except for the little black

  bean within us, still in its skin, awaiting

  rain: inside that is a darker harder bean:

  it is the vitality: it is a hard

  bean: it holds the reaching peripheries in

  3590check:

  74

  clamp the c (c-clamp?) of clog on log, it’s a

  dog: is, too: be beep: bittle de doo doo

  daw: de daw daw: people always if, if, iffing,

  if this, if that, my father used to say

  _________

  3595with a cunning air “if the dog hadn’t

  stopped to shit, he’d have cotched the rabbit”

  my father when he was being winky-wise liked

  to say cotched: (my memory is about as long as

  your dick: that’s fairly short, hiccuped Henry)

  3600no, since you ask, no, I don’t write to trim

  my way into your approval, though I wish your

  approval: and for your censure, it wavers on

  the ridge of defining my good: though I don’t

  care for your censure: still, some things one

  3605doesn’t care for are useful, even illuminating

  but if I don’t let you mess with me, you could

  ask why I mess with you: after all, writing

  is one thing: allurements to readers, possibly

  misleading the worn-out or broke, carry

  3610responsibilities: may you not pay me to do

  whatever I please: do you not like to see the

  field played, especially played well: (some

  writers of traditional verse are better than

  others, as are the writers of free verse: it’s

  3615not the verse that counts but the difference):

  (there really was nothing for me to amount to

  except the nothing I am: I mean, by the

  smallest amount, sir, by a hair, did I manage

  to bring anything off: prospects at my

  3620unfolding were as withered as an old folks’

  _________

  skin collection: as I grew up things were

  said of me by the elders from a

  state of half amusement: I was not thought

  likely, never likable: look you now who

  3625stuffs bucks and smiles: I say, we are blind

  to what we do will do: I say, responsible for

  what we intend, what did we intend: help us

  out there: do us a little good: I say to

  people twisting in their minds, come on over

  3630here to me, honey, I’ve been twisted fo-fi

  times: I know the way to go easy on yourselves:

  it was a dark road to find but I lit it up:

  you are not the big cheese here: you didn’t

  set this up: goodness turns out bad, meanness

  3635saves: how are you supposed to know, when you

  consider that millions of others are intervening

  where the thread will frazzle: but then, of

  course, as it were, press the c (as in

  c-clamp) in clamp up against lamp and you

  3640have damp: cool.

  75

  these cold days in May give me the woolly-willies:

  it’s hard to maintain an erection out in the

  windchill: the young women cannot see your ardent

  carriage increased when the wind outlines

  _________

  3645them in savory ways: (it takes old guys half

  an hour to start pissing and the rest of the

  day to finish): southwetserly: why is it that

  the truth is not half as believable as the

  unlikely: why?, why because the truth runs

  3650from indifferent to terrifying (“we die”)

  whereas the unlikeliest possibility we have

  any evidence of is that (“we don’t”): but it

  is just the unlikeliness that introduces the

  presence of the marvelous, abrogations and

  3655effects only gods could arrange: the unbelievable

  (through faith) becomes the most believable

  while the dull flood of pure truth, abundant,

  overwhelmi
ng, obvious, just washes us away:

  what has an old man to do with a purpose: what

  3660long field or range of hills has he to play his

  purpose through: alas, at the butt end of what

  was, he totes up his tedious results and sorts

  about in them for a flicker of stone or gleam

  of dust, his purpose to reckon up so much

  3665trash played out into dribbles and feints: but

  sometimes old men limping about as if on

  broken bones will have excellent hearing and

  the snickers of the young, or just the rude

  impatience, will smite and jar them and drive

  3670them off ever so castaway to the park benches

  _________

  of neglect and shame: to the young the finicky

  faults of the old are comedies split with

  contrast: but the butt end of all your days &

  ways is a little arousing, if you get my point:

  3675see also, fag end: caught up in the woodsy

  wiles, flickers and gleams, of LIFE, Robert,

  perceiving he could go either way, went the way

  his imagination less frequently went, which

  was, for him, the way most people go, so he had

  3680a fairly normal life—house, children, wife,

  cow, and a side of poems:

  76

  your insidious eloquence makes me seek the

  plain dealing of the woods, the dark, the clear

  stars: and your refinement, a line so thinly

  3685held I can’t tell which side will break from

  snide tittering into howling mockery: (a little

  extra humidity over, say, recent days has

  turned the streets into rivers, embankments

  into rubble, and this morning it all turned

  3690into snow—the pink tulip trees luminous

  under their clusters of white; the crabapple

  blossoms, though, ready to radiate, frozen

  out of their sockets, could be, and everywhere

  gushy mush cushions the walkways: it is, of

  3695course, Mother’s Day, May 11, a good day for

  _________

  corsages’ metallic glaze and fern lace: my

  mother is dead and gone, a death 46 years old,

  but a death as close as the next cell of my

  brain: when in distress with her young brood,

  3700as many dying as living, she cried out “give

  me the roses while I live” I had no roses

  and the distress taken up into myself, I had

  the impoverishment of hysteria, my mouth at

  times as I bent over leaking like a fountain,

  3705my dreams full of stiff figures that tried to

  move: now that I have whatever I want, coin

  or flower, I can give nothing back, the

  lips cannot find a smile, the hands cannot

  ease into the lap, the eyes cannot light with

  3710calm): how does the magician, who makes reality

  vanish, feel when his infected thumb throbs

  and a pink streak or two times its way up his

  arm: does the magic vanish like an imp

  shrieking with mischievous delight: I say,

  3715does the magic of reality take revenge:

  well, so it is with the weavers of language

  and their cunning cloths that string out of

  vestments or take the material out of presences[:]

  some day these weavers will be the object of

  3720their practices, and the present will present

  them with no present of escape: tell true:

  _________

  speak plain: deal openly: shed deceit:

  these yield no room to the coming round of the

  other side: TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF TRASH

  77

  3725truth persists, if at all, hardly distinguishable

  from a pack of lies: the truth has about as

  much chance as a slender of wheat in weeds:

  but, of course, weeds are the truth, too, just

  not the truth we want to keep: not that what

  3730we don’t want to keep isn’t also often true:

  for example, some of us, those below the line,

  want to think that all men are equal, since

  that would raise us: while to others, if all

  men are equal, equality would step them down:

  3735well, the truth is that all men are equal, but

  you know how it is, you hem and haw, give and

  take, squirm and squat, and it all comes out

  how you’re as equal or unequal as you can

  make it: allowances like woolly ramifications

  3740surround these ideal axises (axes?): the

  breaking down of things promotes possibility:

  as with love, the lucky cannot, except by

  scraps and fidgets, hold onto love, while those

  who love to the sour bottom of desperation

  _________

  3745can let nothing, not even themselves, alone to

  live but must cleave to the passion till it

  kills, either inwardly or outwardly: thank

  goodness for the half-assed and easygoing, for

  the good stuff from time to time that takes

  3750love on and lets it go: thank the lord for

  those who get off in the morning to the office

  and clear their minds for stratagem and strife:

  we should always believe the opposite of what

  is believed because what is believed hides

  3755by contradicting what we don’t want to believe:

  the truth covers the merely true and the truly

  believed. . . .

  HASTEN ALONG

  78

  the rot of some deep-wasting roots pops bulbs

  3760of white mushrooms up which boil the soil, I

  mean, moil the soil (a bile phrase), how, what

  a misgo (alack, my best bad writing)—no, no,

  my characters aren’t characters but charact’ry[,]

  all kinds of things played out poorly:

  3765if the temperature, as they say it might, goes

  to 25 tonight, the begonias will be gone, the

  daffodils will be daffy, and the crabapples

  will be, well, crabby, and, of course, the

  _________

  succulent mother-of-pearl will suck: (sonority

  3770cannot draw the height of his arc but blubbers

  underwater like a drowning humpback: these

  days: and a man, a writer, said of a man,

  a literary agent, that he, the literary agent,

  said he liked only gaspable stories: graspable

  3775I said, you mean: no, he, the writer, said:

  he said that he, the literary agent, said he

  would seek to place only the gaspable: alas,

  that ever the age had come to such: but, on

  the other hand, dull, bad writing will not hue

  3780up the cry, I whoreson daresay:) there is a

  galaxy lies askant the tree-level that spins

  its frail arms out to the Hubble lens, and

  light traveling at over 180,000 miles per

  second can get there in 600,000,000 years: you

  3785can put that in your pipe and smoke it, poof

  you’re gone: (when you get old you’re more

  interested in a redistribution of weight than

  wealth: the pot lumps smooth with convexity,

  the abs lose their trained ruffles, and the