by A. R. Ammons
disfavor: well, we are such dust as housemites
husband on, riding microscopic currents in the
stillest parlor air. . . .
UNSIGHTLY HAIR
(1998)
Sucking Flies
No longer confident of the transfigurations, the
assemblages, piercing coordinations, the wound
unwound into a new winding wound again—now,
I just put in the wording: I give words to the
5passing music, taking it as it is, where it goes:
who am I to prevail upon the shallows to reveal
their source materials, the hidden currents,
hidden drives (as the road signs say): what I
am not is a teacher: if Heraclitus, Aristotle,
10Bacon, Burke have not taught the world then
teaching doesn’t work, is not the issue: (but
the music gets so flat: the energies of
transforming lift up, tensely integrative, into
new formations young, beautiful: whereas,
15merely to go along with scrambling mediocrity
is to defer too much to the world:) oh, how
flat it is (so much so that exclaiming about it
nearly gets a rise out of me): is disillusion
wise, or is it wise to fiddle with fragilities,
20little dreams and hopes and foolish beliefs:
there is a smallness runs under things like a
crumbly soil that takes in what remains and
gives back the beauties of the field: our
bodies share these worm-shaken roads: but our
_________
25spirit, it is from before and knows no changes
through all the lineations of consequence. . . .
(1998)
Balsam Firs
With my wife and me, it isn’t so much that we
have used each other up—we really can’t do
that—but that time has used us up: we stand
on the frail end of a long plank where things
5get jittery and, because of the uncertainties,
almost new again: but time, time, has built
us so far out, we’re nearly off the ship: we
turn to each other and say, look, there’s
plenty here to do something about, but do you
10suppose, so late, it’s worth getting started:
still, life is now as it has always been, such
as it has been, life, and we say let’s get on
with it: colloquial idioms at such times
soften sharpness—or, one might say, run an
15iron rod out under the plank: I, myself, am
not much use: I have churned the word mill so
long that I can’t pick out anything from
anything: I’ve said everything and mostly
cared when it sounded good: but my wife is as
20solid as a jug or judge: her words, purporting
_________
to mean, are bottom lines: I listen to her:
sometimes, I write down what she says, too:
but getting back to the boat, I’m for running
a few sails up and hooking into the changes:
25we’re feeling blustery and the open deep spills
out where the farthest sight is only sea. . . .
Tree Limbs Down
The poverty of having everything is not
wanting anything: I trudge down the mall halls
and see nothing wanting which would pick me
up: I stop at a cheap $79 piece of jewelry,
5a little necklace dangler, and it has a diamond
chip in it hardly big enough to sparkle, but it
sparkles: a piece of junk, symbolically vast;
imagine, a life with a little sparkle in it, a
little sparkle like wanting something, like
10wanting a little piece of shining, maybe the
world’s smallest ruby: but if you have everything
the big carats are merely heavy with price and
somebody, maybe, trying to take you over: the dull
game of the comers-on, waiting everywhere like
15moray eels poked out of holes: what did Christ
say, sell everything and give to the poor, and
immediacy enters; daily bread is the freshest
kind: dates, even, laid up old in larders, are
_________
they sweet: come off sheets of the golden
20desert, knees weak and mouth dry, what would
you think of an oasis, a handful of dates, and
a clear spring breaking out from under some stones:
but suppose bread can’t daily be found or no
oasis materializes among the shimmers: lining
25the outside of immediacy, alas, is uncertainty:
so the costly part of the crust of morning
bread is not knowing it will be there: it has
been said by others, though few, that nothing
is got for nothing: so I am reconciled: I
30traipse my dull self down the aisles of
desire and settle for nothing, nothing wanted,
nothing spent, nothing got.
Wetter Beather
When a person inquires too much into my
condition, I wonder if he searches for ill
or good: as for my typewriter, it will not do
well in a humidity, it takes on a gummy
5lethargy, it refuses its spaces, stalling its
keys which, certainly, just fling themselves
idly against a nonchalance: but let a cool
front through or let a heat wave require the
air conditioner and the keys flick along as easily
10as thought: this foreknowledge prevents me
_________
from hastening off, heavy manual machine under
my arm or confined upon my hip by the arm,
hastening off, I say, to the repair shop—
a lucky patience because there no longer are
15any shops for this device, and few ribbons
around and sparse typewriter paper: I am in
the midst of a technological redoing which
I will not abide till the radiant screens no
longer flicker: but my talent is so expired
20that I need not trouble myself with digital
advances, I merely amuse myself in the comfort
of my own surrounding ignorance, with no
intention of publication and, of course, little
hope that others will press me thru the press.
The Gushworks
When what it was is what it is (or when what
it is is what it was) there you have an overlap:
for example, when you blow your nose, you
could, you know, close the handkerchief on the
5product: instead, you are likely to open up
to see WHAT IT WAS: was it just a clear
gelatinous blob or a crusty skin shield or a
butterball of gooey glop: or as when you go
to the bathroom, you could flush before rising
10but you probably rise before flushing: you
_________
want to see WHAT IT WAS: you want to find out
if what it was going to be can be elicited
into a knowledge of what it now is: like an
oyster-type gob, your nose, I mean: I am a
15member of the vertical circle whose arc passes
through a height above nearly all human interest
and whose depth encloses the silences of most
human shame: there is a sense in which the
integrity of the circle is taut throughout,
20indifferent to its notches and degrees, as
indifferent as the discourses of my fellows
remain to me: think little of me, I will
think no less of you: the axle goes right
through my ears, and the merriment is in all
25the go-round.
Body Marks
Nailing down the cause of anything is not easy:
you notice a prominent strand in the random
weave and think, well, that’s probably it: but
that may be there just to mislead the born or
5else it works only in association with a set
of subsets or sublineations and only expensive
time can rectify a balance out of that: I say
why is my hipbone flashing out each step down
_________
my femur this morning when I walked less than
10usual yesterday: well, too many stairs: well,
slept on that side all night: well, it’s really
your colon hurting: what? well, remember
last night during that TV drama you had one
leg stretched out to the coffeetable too long:
15that could have defined a warp in your bone
pain calls attention to: well, well: you’ve
(I’ve) probably hit on it: which would prove
it out this evening, hanging your leg up there
again or not: that is the question: when in
20the second grade, cut on the playground, I,
playing hounds and fox (I was the fox, the slow
boys the hounds) skidded my left knee over the
spike of a buried stump, I got a 3 to 4 inch
slash and nearly passed out: I felt so
25important, though: imagine being taken to a
doctor’s office! and all the expensive stuff
was unwound and wound onto me, with taping
and splinting (I almost said splintering):
3 weeks off from school: stitches put in,
30torn out by bending the knee, re-stitched, and
you know how it goes when you’re eight: I’m
70 now, and I still can see little white
raisures where the stitches ripped free: you
could know me anywhere: talk about identity:
_________
35I’m nobody else except myself, unless somebody
has a mark just like mine (backed up by
another scar (I won’t tell you about now) on
the inside of my left wrist, not an attempt
at anything selfcritical:) I’m sure you think
40all this is just as important and worthy of
posterity as I do. . . .
Yonderwards
I want to do a painting: I want to slur a raw
shoulder: I want to bruise a man, look into
a woman’s eyes you could travel through
for life as through a galaxy or toward one:
5I want paint painting-through rubs out: how
about a sudden lush bush on the right hand side
with a distant small bridge topping it: and
from right top to left bottom a sweep (maybe
water) quickly broadening down: but then a
10goat’s head is right up front, on this side of
the river (?) and when you look away and look
back it is all a beautiful woman; perhaps, her
bosom is the moon filling the upper left hand
beyond the river: I want a painting to do me
15in: I want to wilt down and supremely recover:
but look what happened to Ozymandias and
EVEN SHELLEY
Depressed Areas
It is one thing to be nobody, but to be nobody
in the South! there is no roping in the rope
ladder and there are no steps in the step: or
you’re let to climb up high enough that a
5missing rung will de-characterize your mounting:
or something pressured by your step will fly
up and pop you in the face: the blast will
bust your ast: but if by any vine-swinging
you cling on above the pitfalls and call out,
10look, it’s me, I’m way up—why the South will
notice its allowances credited you and now you
“owe something back”—the old give-back back
again: whereas out West the roads are longer
than the wanderers and up north in the City
15the homeless sit out among the tall buildings
as noticeable and anonymous as Exxon: (if you
own a little Exxon, no hard feelings): but
who cares, poetry is like a swamp, it will make
up anywhere there’s a bottom: and the great
20trees after all whose tops only the sky can
see . . . they topple and the water eats them up:
what do you do when the metaphors are shaping
up to oppose your case: why, end the poem.
1996
Dishes and Dashes
I always wanted (when I was a boy—and even
now) to have a stretch of water, at least a
farm pond or house pond, a little circular
flat thing with fish in it, pike and bream,
5sunflowers: something glassy as the sky, that
could fill up with clouds (cloud and could)
that would crash into the banks where among the
sedges and grasses mosquito hawks and dragonflies
would pitch and tilt: the sheen and silver,
10the stillness, a patch of lilies maybe, or a
clutch of cattails a redwing might get close
enough to jeer in: but I still have the sky,
deeper than any stillness I could get water to
hold, and the years go by and it clears blue
15and breezy: the geese seesaw back and forth,
talking through: (neither a sayer nor a doer
be: be a beer (nonalcoholic)): much of my
sin is not original: a little verbal abuse
(herein demonstrated), a little self-abuse
20(which I make a practice of keeping to myself):
a few painful exaggerations and oversights
(lies), etc., a fairly normal menu: more
nearly original are things like being part of
the web of human relations, wherein, for
_________
25example, we used to be tobacco growers, and
my mother, a religious person, hated tobacco
anyhow, but it would have killed her to know
she was killing people, something not known
way back then: but I, I brought the green
30leaves up from the field by a Silver-drawn
sled, poor mule: but lately I advised a man
to stop smoking, and he did, but he gained
twenty pounds and ran into diabetes and high
blood pressure: put that in your pipe and
35—no, no: that’s what I mean: get down
on your knees and ask to be excused because
there isn’t a damn thing you can do about much
of the damage you do: pray, brother, pray,
and join the praying crowd. . . .
(1997)
Auditions
So there we were eating feathered dinosaur
meat for Sunday dinner and expecting the
return of Jesus Christ any minute: looking
forward to the return when, by the way, highly
5disturbing reorientations would be invoked:
graves we had held still with rows of clam
shells would blast open and actual grandmothers
and grandpappies would flare up midair in musty