by A. R. Ammons
3790flesh-flabby dugs dangle down: a mispleasaunce
at the end of the road: I hope my literature,
which was mere allusion, has pleased you: I’m
signing off for today, I have to brush my teeth
and get some sleep: tomorrow I have to get
_________
3795the garbage out by the road by 8 a.m.: (had he
taken the “wrong” road he would have hit an
EVEN BIGGER DIFFERENCE)
79
it is hilarious how sad the world is: I mean,
for us: the planet itself, of course, rolls
3800on free crushing over our surmises and tribulations:
what is sad is sad but also the silverest
ruffle in the dark-headed storm tower fleets
so fast we burst in tears: we can’t tell
whether to look to this moment or the next;
3805whether to try to hold still while we gut the
moment of its quickest physics, our work as
patient and busy as dungrollers, or to rush off
smartly to possibility in the next tick, a
second chance, perhaps, or another moment just
3810run over and left: that the world is so bad
off (for us, I mean) is tragic, but the tragic
fully ballooned and fleshed out splits into
peals of tearful aches—I mean, how far can
you go with a funeral before you die laughing:
3815this defensive device has been as it were
created by the earth for us, an earth that
doesn’t care a hoot for a holler: (or
sometimes, from the last minute gold in the
west you can look across to the other side
_________
3820where a sunken thunderhead is topped in rose:)
desire is an industrial-strength cleanser: no
matter the microbe-ridged crevices of smegma,
the tongues of some will swirl the velvety
precincts of the little bead or some will
3825slurp as if the clabber of paradise lumps of
cum: glory nestles into a little dirt, and
dirt slickens as fine as ecstasy: well, I
suppose some polar opposite is spread apart
there to arrange the coming together of things
3830OH, DEAR
80
you think if you say you’re going to die, you
won’t die: oh, no, you say, I’m going to die,
you’re going to die, we’re all going to die:
you think that takes the spell in and
3835throws it back: la, la, it’s like one hell of
a party: but, of course, if we do really get
a party out of it now! but then, how are we
to handle these thorny problems except with
gloves, sprays, and rugged protective devices:
3840we do not know as much as you might think:
the planets were once all points of light and now
they are so different no crazy inventor could
have invented them: anything looked at
closely becomes wonderful, especially—there
_________
3845she goes, that flimsy skirt, those legs,
clicking down the hall to the restroom to
piddle that pussy, lord, have mercy, (if
she doesn’t piddle her pants getting there): of
all the resources from dark origins, what we
3850most implore is endowment, to stand in the
fresh embarrassment of involuntary arising
before eager astonishment and juicy possibility,
to cause terror to tighten bliss across the
sweep of the trembling abyss
3855I have nowhere
to
go and all
day
to get there
81
3860trust no one: there is not a shred of loyalty
that will not yield to advantage or change of
circumstance: when you do what you’re supposed
to do and others do what they’re supposed to
do, trust is not called for: (the point,
3865actually, is to foray for aye—and not to
yield): (you know how wide the universe is;
we can blow off a few spots and nothing
ever missing): oh, foller the dollar, it knows
the way: dam the way up, so the dollars get
_________
3870out of hand in mounds, deep chests, and long
keepings, moldy trusts: put your dollars to
work: and stay home yourself: if you don’t
have two dollars, start with one: pretty soon
you’ll be sitting around thinking of all the
3875things money can’t buy: (it is important to
note that all states are miserable: the only
joy is in thinking it desirable to get from
one to the other, state, I mean: California
is the best state, because you can’t get to
3880another state that way, so your misery can
turn into the delights of imagining an East:
oh, the tricky land of the luck-strewn East,
the painted temples scribbled and scrolled
so amply as to allow the falling out of the
3885farthest personal chance, number: let’s see:
what other moralizing can I do, orders give,
prayers urge—all unimaged, unexampled:
(take Long San Temple, for example, the
dolphins yin and yang circling the center,
3890a floridity of dragons (florality?) entertwining
the outside of the circle, the inside of the
octagon): Shakespeare, heightening artifice,
renaturalizes nature. . . .
82
a hip pain, a swollen gum, eyes that stick dry
3895at night, an ingrown toenail, a skin blemish
precancerous, I tell you, I feel like shoot,
I feel like wasted space: I mean I feel as
out of place as if Mary Scots had feared getting
salmonella from the chopping block: I feel
3900like deeply undecided old men, drawn backward
more than they can push forward, their
lightning fork-shorn, their little slug soft as
a snail, patches of decay festering in their
groins: I feel approximately like that: also,
3905I don’t feel good: instead of a young squirt
you have a little bulging blubber: I need
help: but you can bet a circumloca(cu)tion
around your asshole (round trip, rim trip) that
when the dogooders get out there saving lives
3910(don’t eat, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t sit
around) they’re fooling themselves out of
knowing that too many live already (so
hard to accept) and too many live too long
(Medicare, Medicaid): we save only to drown
3915in ourselves: not to rush out to save is to
admit the truth: I can’t wait for somebody to
save me: when I was ten about I was called up
_________
to the altar of the Pentecostal Fire-Baptized
Holiness Church to be saved and later as I
3920sat on a bench recovering, an old woman asked
carefully and earnestly if I was saved: hell,
yes, I think: saved from all that froth: no
bit of foolishness people will not take
seriously and the more removed from probability
3925the less likely it need ever be tested by
reality, so the more deliciously constant, the
purer: I never can quite get over this
propensity, the obviously true forsaken in
search of a delusion in
a corny grotto: the
3930thing for which there is no evidence shines
what only deity knows: that light can intercede
with the worst real circumstance: the people
while foolish are no fools: they go for the
good stuff where it’s best obtained, and
3935cheapest: the gism never fails that is beyond
this world, can’t be analyzed into failure:
the fault that can’t be mended is no fault:
BLADDER PROBLEMS
83
you’ve probably heard the one about the lay of
3940the land: then there’s the one about my
_________
elevator not going all the way to the top
anymore: and, of course, I’m like black
raspberry jam—seedless (actually, I have
plenty of seed, it’s germination that’s the
3945bust): but hang, oh, hang, hang on, the fat
lady is still primping in the dressing room: we
have time to consider the considerations,
whatever they were, I’ve forgotten: what was
it all about: oh, yes, it’s all about what I
3950saw this morning as I was sitting in the car
over in Geneva waiting for Phyllis to come out
of the Hanging Gardens store with her hanging
tuberous begonia when coming towards me in the
parking lot was this boy and semi-scraggly
3955girl and he was trying to press down this
erection, sometimes running his hand in his
pocket: her hair was hanging down and she was
talking: he probably had thought of the tip
of her nipple or the lip of her barge-swinger,
3960and there he was, ready: that, I said to
myself, is what I can nearly remember: just
think of gliding, think of that footloose,
fancy-free gliding back and forth between the
stars, and then that stillness you can’t hold
_________
3965anymore than you could hold a tiger, just a
shiver of motion and you are powerfully done
and undone: but it’s Memorial Day and those
are memories: some of the people I was in the
war with didn’t come back: that is very sad
84
3970consciousness is a kind of planet, inscribed
on the outside with whatever’s seen or done,
trekked or swum, climbed or scrambled down,
while inside the molten moves (drives, slow
shifts) redispose how the surface lies: we’re
3975wardens, gardeners, waterworkers of the self
keeping the circulations clear and the light
bright; except, of course, we clog everything
up and dumb everything down dim:
I sit alone back to the window
3980in a square of winter sun:
the curve of the earth
sinking into the deep beyond
falls away all around me:
nothing holds us up but
3985a centering in motion, the great
sun, unpropped, its center being
hauled off, too,
motion finding its ties
with greater clusters and
3990centers enveloping
_________
what’s up?
what’s up?
what’s up?
what?
3995what?
85
I don’t actually like the smell of pricks, I
think: even pussy puts me off if I’m not up
for it: light jam, though, though sticky, a
dab, say, the thinnest apple, can improve the
4000layout: or a spray, a touch of perfume by the
cheek or lip can really brighten things: art,
so transforming, addresses an aspect or two
but often overrides nature too much, so that
one can long to be back at the beginning, the
4005substance put forward unaltered in its own
surprise: work with it: who knows what
combinations will do the trick: (listen,
desire can turn the slickest scum marsh
into golden shores): I’ve
4010gotten to where no one is included in my
sexual preference: true desire savors its
satisfactions in silence, feels in awe the
piercing surgeries of unforgivable beauty,
stricken heart, pulled gut suffered dumb:
4015true desire, covert, will not want its eye to
_________
be seen about, because it “takes two,” and
meetings glance off killingly as much as tie
together rope to rope: some loudmouth
rattletrap old creep or some feinter and
4020disguiser will keep the air full of sexual
this and innuendo that, they burst the tension
out of silence, these vulgarians, what are they
about who are about nothing: desire keeps,
rejoices in, and suffers its time: a woman
4025in her reticences can be deeper than the stars
and twice as foreign: delicacy and harsh
sweetness fill the barge of pain; honor and
service willingly show upon the lips of tender
feeling: the coarse, ah, the coarse, unhappily
4030they are not refined: to one aright, the
garden of the woman is full of flowers: the
porcelain gardenias of the upper arm, oh, the
marigolds of the armpits, petunias in the
groove between the jaw and neck, oh, the navel
4035dandelions, oh, the verbena, viburnum, tiger
lilies, musk roses, the orchids of the eyelids
oh, yes, the scent, every inch another, and
every one a seeping nectar, a dew distilled, a pop
sicle: of course, if you get old, sour, and
_________
4040wrinkled, too stiff to lope, slap, and yodel,
why, then you have to love the spirit more:
by then the flowers have fruited and the
nectarines lie about and the grapes split of
their own plenty, and the casks of honey clear,
4045and wine, cool as the hecatombs, revives the
flowers of the mind: say goodnight, Archie
GOODNIGHT, ARCHIE
86
Love Poem
1
4050You can’t fill
a shallow
dish
with a strong
faucet:
4055a
dribble, though,
will brim it
over
2
4060A baby wren
can’t
use
_________
a whole squirrel
but a skinny
4065flow
of the lacywinged
will soon set
it off
3
4070You come on
like a comber
foaming
at the crest:
stir me
4075only
please as a
pond lap
slips
87
Old Age
4080Whatever is
wrong
won’t
be
wrong long.
4085this is the beginning of my next piece: I
don’t yet know what it’s about but I suppose