by A. R. Ammons
Al, we know you’re there, but you don’t know
5we’re here,” and that seemed to screw up the
strivings for immortality: no use to be
immortal in the bodies of others while one’s
own body molds away or flakes off in pasty
chunks: this is a version of an old thought
10of mine: one forgets before one is forgotten,
so don’t worry about being remembered, just
worry about being, that’s something to worry
about: so, Housey, I wish you could have
gotten what you wanted out of life: but the
15other fellow had a right to get what he
wanted (or try to get what he wanted) out of
life, and since that wasn’t what you wanted
well, there you go, but we know where you’re at:
in fact, tho, A. E., you’re not in your grave,
20not the real you: whatever of the real you
is left is here with us: you’re here with
us, in a sense: the grave holds nothing, or
what soon will be: but no one, now, dead or
alive can hold you in his arms and dry your eyes.
(1997)
Spit
Thinking I’d better be prepared when I went
out to meet the ocean, I blew myself up but
burst in time: so the next morning,
actually nearly before light, I converted
5myself into a ghost crab, peeked out of my hole
over the sand, and there it was, the whole
wide thing, gray as the morning and on no
business but its own: when it washed over me
I waited, sealed off, underground until it
10washed away: then I came out and the
ocean had become itself again: even so, the
sight burst my horizon: women’s preferences
evolve the form of man, I’m told, a pretty
lousy trail of taste, the women apparently
15wanting strength but not too much, independence
but heavily nurtured, paunches, wheezes, and
some broken-down feet: men, though, choose
women, too, but hardly a shriveled-up old
shrew or shrunken prune hasn’t been fucked
20over, over and over: the results lie and limp
in the streets: run-over heels and busted
belts decorate open air fashion: what went
wrong, you may ask: or is it right: why doth
perfection here and there in the wildest
_________
25statistic only appear: c’est la vie: yep:
something is more cockeyed than broad shouldered:
desire is the supreme beautician: she (or he)
deodorizes and/or fertilizes most any patch: he
(or she) rushes forward in her own perfection
30till a port in some exigency (storm, I mean)
releases her to a free moment of disgust.
(1997)
Lineage
Poets “say things”: they shape stuff up and
make it “sound like something”: it is shaping’s
concision they’re after, an airy framework
passing can pause in: though the framing and
5passing are as if one: take pussy pussy, now:
that’s p - uh - puh - sy poo-sy, puhsey poosy:
you know: pointing up separates out, limits
into identity: so, it’s not poosy poosy, as
in calling your cat, or as in calling out at
10night incoherently poosy poosy: no, it says
that the poosy is puhsy, though there may be
no such thing in the world but perfectly clean
sweet pussy: it is something we come into the
world through the back door of, a place dreams
15and dreamers are made on, so tenderly secret,
so terrifying, gaunt, where I began, in fire,
_________
which fled into windy air and lengthily slowed
and cooled into rain’s fallen waters, running,
and then I became swamp or rockbottom ground:
20what an old story, told only after the telling:
here now are the ceaseless maggots, the squirm
of disintegration, the obscene, vulgar, coarse,
the what-the-hell, beyond which, however, lies
the fire and dust, the refinements of
25rebeginning: alas, that it could have been no
different until one sees it could have been.
(1997)
Now Then
You can have your bathroom window open an inch
and if the door is nearly closed, it can slam
it shut: the wind can: whereas, if the door
is standing open (as perhaps it shouldn’t be)
5(not if you’re doing anything, you know, cool)
a hurricane would do little more than tremble
the door (however much it rattled the window);
may not, contrariwise, the physics be in the
metaphysics: which is to say that major effects
10can come of slender spacings, while something
too wide open cannot be bothered by anything:
broadly, therefore, welcome the world, and if
_________
you must have them keep your splinterings and
partitions solidly shut away from transmission[:]
15you are, in other words, everyone, except for
your little exception box to which you may
repair for repair or prayer when the wide
scene loses hold on its outlines: the more to
be said the closer you get to nothing: you
20peep out at dawn and say of the whole thing,
look at that, when, later, looking at the
vibration in the microinscriptive, you may
need to call up libraries of language for
poise: it could not be truly said of the
25yellowjackets that they are out in the drizzle
today without their jackets, even though it is
true that they are not without their jackets:
if god is in each of us, I wonder if he is
in each of the gorillas, if only in his
30gorilla-aspect, a facet the gorillas can see
themselves and be seen by, just as, I suppose,
when we look, we see our own natures, native
and, like ligatures, sewn together: the
yellowjackets that usually streak straight into
35the stone socket of the stone wall they nest
in, today buzz broadly about that wet entrance
before diving in: the yellowjacket god is these
motions, and when naked yellowjackets
_________
dip and streak and hunt the clover blooms,
40don’t think they don’t feel at home, right with
their god: for it is true far and wide that
nothing is so true as what breaks into being
this minute from colossal petrifications of
past time and huge issuances into time-to-be:
45don’t mess with me, or the yellowjackets: we
are in a high place which may or may not explode
but if it explodes nothing will be lost, every
little tiny atom will still be spinning for
the lord: we may go, and scientists may suck
50the yellowjackets out of their hole to extract
the sting-venom: have no fear: weep but move
on: if the god is not in residence, he is in
motion, and it is hard to tell which is which:
coco rico, the rooster crows: it is day again.
(1997)
Shit Face
What due’s death’s due: is death fifty/fifty
with life, or is there one thing only, life,
&n
bsp; life merely ends: what difference, you say,
does it make: why, I suppose it makes a
5difference: should you spend half your life
buddying-up with death or should you altogether
_________
ignore it, since it is nothing, and think life,
life, life! and companion not at all with dark
consequence, a distant cousin: be not
10reproachful if you find no scissors in me
cutting cleanly through this: I am too
concerned with whether I am one blade and
unable to gnaw or whether I command opposing
blades whose opposition draws a straight
15slice: why, by the way, is direction in
opposition, while mere ineffectuality gapes
in singleness: single women who will not
chunk it up, why mere air will not slam it
down: I’m sure there’s more to this than
20meets the eye: with bursts of gamma rays
from unlocatable sources flashing around us,
I wonder how much of the universe’s center
the new leaf on the philodendron can capture:
it is, after all, quite an emergence, timed
25on December 19, just right for the lengthening
light, do you suppose: or did that watering
about a month ago, a long overdue soak, set
it off: I do not specialize in the causes of
anything, acceptance over explanation anytime[:]
30causes are the results of something else whose
results cause something else: still, I don’t
think it just goes round and round, though it
_________
goes round and round: I think there are some
little threads in there that feed in or peel
35out, along with embroilment and hurling along
the central axis: but I don’t believe for a
sec that a butterfly sinking down to suck salt from
a riverside causes a cyclone at sea: buildups
would be just fine if other buildups weren’t
40cutting them down, you bet your sweet bippy:
where is any action going to find a wide avenue
of gathering energy in: not the Champs thing:
not Park or Fifth: certainly, no winding
riverbed or former long lake dinosaurs got
45washed away with when it cracked open ever so
many thousand years gone by: still, it is
largely true that eating too much fat fattens
people: anxiety, on the other hand, drains
you lean: fat and happy (or not so happy) or
50scrawny and miserable (or quite light on your
feet): life, though, is terribly sad because
it apparently leads to death: unless, of
course, you need to get there, I hope you don’t,
but you should hear the doctors laugh and
55cringe at my medical theories about what
causes what: actually, I think, or they think
_________
I think, or they just think that my theory
includes some psychology, like paranoia, say,
and hypochondria: well. . . .
Surprising Elements
The Ammons women (nine of them, my father’s
sisters) were jovial women: well, I guess you
could say that: for them, the distance between
fun tears and tears was a flash of seconds:
5Aunt Mitt used to say of some old scraggly man
that he was hopper-behind—hopper behinded?
she meant he was all shoulders (or belly) and
no backseat, just some draggy pants with nothing
back there to fill them out, a hopper, do you
10reckon: I doubt she meant he was a hopper,
always looking to hop on something, if you get
my inclination: I think she meant something
to fill up, as in picking green beans in the
field and carrying them in a hopper: Aunt Mitt
15died in the front bedroom: the parlor was on
the other side of this long hall: I stood in
line out on Aunt Mitt’s porch when I was sixteen
to receive with others her coffin to put in the
hearse: I was a pallbearer: I was sixteen:
20what I saw didn’t sink in: I was thinking
_________
something else: though I saw (and recall)
everything very clearly: the room she died in
exists nowhere now probably but in my head:
well, there may be one of her seven surviving:
25it was a long time ago: I wish I knew: Aunt
Lottie was such an eager woman, so full of
life and laughter: what became of her will
make a short story long. . . .
Out From Under
Sometimes movies produce events to go with what
must be instead of letting what must be arise
from events: the first is contrived and
feebly illustrative, while the latter creates
5the inevitability of what must come: all this
is known to everyone: I only look for another
set of words to say it: even if not well: a
try: can you imagine how wonderful it is not
to be on the track of a final draft but living
10in an instantaneous veracity: but Johnson, I
think, said that easy writing makes hard
reading: oh, I wish I could have sat around
and belched a little with him, the immensity
of his philosophical centeredness occupied
15with trivia and cold leg of lamb: even
if Moses had not clum up the mountain and
_________
gotten scorched in the fire service, it would
be a good idea not to steal, lie, or mess with
your neighbor’s wife: you could get killed or
20hanged, where there’s a distinction: you
really don’t need a stone memento to sanction
what open dynamics clearly affirm: it is
better to honor your parents: you don’t have
to agree with them: honoring is a peaceful
25and informed transition: dishonor almost
certainly flares up unpleasantly privately
but also fractures the public order: so how
long do I have to go on about this. . . .
(1998)
The Whole Situation
Don’t stop or the past will catch up with you:
all the dumb things you said (for fun) will
overtake you and huddle around you pointing
serious fingers: redemption lies ahead if
5only in a new relation to the past: for what
can redeem the past—a newer way of looking
at it in the future: for how can what is done
be undone: pay attention to something else:
forget about it: misremember it: ask for
10forgiveness: do something else good: devise
_________
distractions: keep busy: be up and about and
the ghostly leavings of events will lay down,
as with riverbeds, bottoms over bottoms, or
grow, as with coral seas, one thing on top of
15another: up and about, you will find that
quick motions in the scenes and quick changes
of scene give a sense of fluidity to the hard
rock of fixation: take a pill: change the
mood and everything changes: thank the Lord
20for change which often so much worsens the