by A. R. Ammons
world: the sun has had its earliest setting,
and Christmas is only a dusting white: I
remember an ancient Christmas morning with my
tin toy mule and milk wagon on the quilt:
25I was four and that little thing tied a world
together: it was a miracle: but that is a
story too old to save. . . .
WE FORD LOW WATER AND FERRY DEEP
(1998)
Rattling Freight Lines
December 30th and already the sun setting
cleared the crabapple tree branch northbound:
the sun, though, still rises later till, say,
the middle of January, but then day will widen
_________
5on both sides, opening like a flower, the mother
of all flowers: what summary learning is one
to take from all this: why, that it is some
of the world’s oldest baggage, incredibly new:
we got our kicks in year 96 but will the market
10be heaven in ninety-seven: oops, there it
goes, poetry again: rilly quaint: (actually,
I stand on the corner of the livingroom rug,
and that is what makes the sun always set
earliest behind the crabapple branch): (if
15the rug slips or the branch sways, the whole
cosmos will be off:) (imagine an inch shifting
a nebula): it seems better not to make living
the object: because if living is the object,
death dismisses the proceeds: I presume I am
20trying to make something, not a living surely:
what I am trying to make (prosetry?) prevents
me from undertaking the routes to living:
what would it mean to go in for living, what
would one do, apart, of course, from the
25terror of the adamant scythe: abandon oneself
to one’s appetites (eat, drink, be merry, for)
(the hornet’s nest’s paper weight gives spring
to the limb, a breeze that shivers empty twigs)
and complications right away arise. . . .
That’s What I Just Got Through Saying
Shakespeare makes speaking, poetry: how does
he do that, anyhow: but, of course, nobody
in England ever talked liked that: or anywhere
else: but S distinguished between poetry and
5prose, poetry metrical (and sometimes rimed):
so poetry, am I to think, is at least mechanically
metrical: but on the chance that tidal rhythm
which is the kind I write—prosetry—can be
allowed, I make a new word for it, probably
10not new: prosetry, though, is a word for the
groundlings who are probably incapable of a
perception not a definition: I expect the
sensitive and listening to hear the music in
prosetry and be able to pick out the poetry
15and then see that it prevails overall: or
else what is intelligence for: all that is
music from the past must be kept and all that
is sound given up: and new sound must ever so
subtly inform the old music (the deep silent
20dynamics) and hold us safely in the arms of
our fathers, as we hold our children in our
arms: please, let’s not hear anything more
about prosetry. . . .
It Doesn’t Hold Water
So many people, you know, use their mouths as
an amusement park: they do rides on the
crunchymunchies, or slip down the slurp sluice,
or take in the carbonated baths, bubble burns,
5or merry-go-round the chocolate box: this kind
of amusement, though, is like any other: you
have to pay for it: pounds and pounds and
pounds, and even some dollars: this amusement
feels light—indeed, is—but turns heavy:
10still, I think you’re better off using your
mouth for an amusement park than a playground:
whatever that is: careful with that one: my
advice is, use your mouth for a monastery and
keep the gate shut: or use it for a nunnery:
15pray, and burn your fat and the candle’s: I
find it awkward to type and eat (it is not
impossible to do so) so I type a lot: I melt
calories into letters: I have a letter box
like an ancient printer: his lead is my lead:
20I hand type as he hand set: as I see him,
covered with ink and metal, I see him too busy
to eat: a ligature, a quarto, a folio, these
were his intervals, his lunch breaks: I see
him musing appreciatively over his work, a
_________
25lean person with a sober expression: he leans
back against the counter and doesn’t get all
the lead off his fingers: (I think he has a
leather apron on): use your mouth as a
hangar and hold the words in or let them fly.
Tom Fool
But what giving is to be expected from someone
who has nothing to give: and if one is to
have something to give, where is he to get it:
will others give it to him: let’s say, not
5consistently: and for what is given him, is
he to be paralyzed in a humiliation of
gratitude: can’t one who has much give much,
if he will: where is one to acquire much,
except by making, keeping, and accruing, even
10at a profit from others for services rendered:
if you have something to give, should you give
it to an individual who may be a wastrel or
vagabond, or should you give it to the
community as capitalization for business
15activities bringing, maybe, jobs for carpenters,
word processors, software designers, so that
you make money yourself by giving, in a
sense, to all: well, you can see it isn’t
_________
easy, is it: look after yourself, you may be,
20if inadvertently, looking after others: at
least, you won’t be one yourself who needs to
be looked after by others: he creates a boon
who removes himself from welfare: as for me,
I am as much an innocent standbyer as bystander
25which is to say, I may be participating even
when I am saying nothing, whenever that was:
but, all in all, the world doesn’t make much
sense unless we make a little something up
TO GO WITH IT
Ringadingding
Dress up a charlatan like a lord, and who is
the lord: or don beggar’s rags upon a beggar
and watch the curtseys stumble: if clothes
are the man, it is only so in consideration of
5clothes—but since that consideration can
pass for the whole, man and all, it can be all:
the rich dress down and the poor up to achieve
true levels of participation that are truly
lies: well, misstatements of sign: you can,
10indeed, not know the true man at all, if the
true man differs from the clothes he wears,
by the clothes he wears: I would have you
_________
stumble there, as before the good writer
poorly dressed: looking good or bad, I pledge
15to prefer no charge against myself: when the
police show up, I’ll hire the best lawyer in
town and get off, tried or mistried: I’ll pump
money into my lawyer, and his mouth will fly<
br />
with devices, exceptions, exemptions, and sweet
20big words: I am not going to let myself lie
around undefended and defenseless: I haven’t
done anything: I’ve done hardly anything now
for years: the sweetest leisure is work of
one’s own choosing: (life is short, even when
25it isn’t): I mean, I haven’t done anything the
law doesn’t allow or can’t find: but inside,
where the differences are, everybody is in
court, tongues and heads are flying and chains
are rattling: can, I cry out, we bring some of
30these issues to trial: oh, no, when one is
oneself jury, accuser, pleader, judge subduing
the maelstrom lacks separation, the fiddling
aside of the plainly innocent: live for others:
living for others is life for oneself: live
35for yourself, you put your self at odds with
all mankind, and you grow sour in your losses
or gains: cut off, you win or lose against
yourself, which is never winning: live for
_________
others, not that they may live for themselves,
40but that they, too, may live for others: life
for all can come of this, since giving is the
sweetest given, given back: the world’s twisty
and the straightaway is crooked and the crooked
straightaway. . . .
I Wouldn’t Go So Far As to Say That
The trouble with style is that it cannot look
ragged if clean cut, nor empty if full, nor
colorless if bejeweled: I mean, you would
think that: but so much colorful stuff is
5trashy and boring, and serene emptiness is the
highest plane in some spheres, and raggedness
can look like clean displays of ruffles: I am
so impressed with the malleability of things
that I’m ready to let almost anything go: how
10do you want the world, well, within reason,
have it any way you please: many can be boring
in their richest effort, but how can I be
plainly, truthfully boring except by being
boring (clever line break): and how can I
15burst out into something if I already know the
program: but how can you bear exposure—and
why should you—to so much trot: I don’t
know any reason except to be there when the
_________
deal goes down, when competence stumbles and
20reveals its dirty underclothes, or when the
spirit’s whirlwind strikes the windy hills to
raise the dust: but I also wonder how you can
bear to be in the presence of the well-written
all the time: so, some little creep can iron
25it out and measure it off, doodle some outlines
and make it look neat: let him: her: what to
do about style is one of my meanest problems:
I wrote some poems really short: I revised a
few till they were just perfectly revised: I
30confess now to some interest in good bad
writing: I would just as soon see what I can
do about getting across the river when the
bridge floods out: what do I know: it may not
even rain: or if it rains, the sky may clear
35so gloriously gold-fringed that I will weep:
prepared weeping may not achieve its tears,
but tears cannot be prevented when they have
to gather: this is an example: it’s not
revised, it’s bad, it’s wonderful. . . .
Thrown for a Loop
There’s so much more belief than truth, and
that is lucky in a way, belief inclining us
_________
more toward what we need than what we’ll get:
but we really do believe what we believe and
5we hope it will work out: but put a plug of
gold on the scale opposite a sack full of
painted feathers, truth will that great woven
cluster outweigh: the fulcrum could be called
“getting along”—and that’s where balanced
10persons no doubt stand: those who slip down
the arm toward feathers keep an eye back on
truth, I’ll bet, and those heavy with truth,
which is sometimes ruthlessly truth, oh, they
longingly look toward the painted fare: belief
15can fulfill dramas of yearning, while truth’s
exactions narrow down the margins: but even
when it’s a tightrope it’s somewhere to walk,
while dramas address theatrical appetites:
that truth and belief are one, cooperating one
20with the other, that is simply GRAND, and they
sometimes do, aiming at heaven, cooperate: I
think that this means only that illusion plays
well against reality, though we have so much
trouble telling which is which, truth often
25losing the figurements of its setup, and
illusion as often floating off, a grain of
_________
reality its core: there is a sufficient place
in the mind that turns away into the errors
of explanation just to be about: the sitting
30center’s butt gets tired, and the feet and
legs can do with a little circulation, like
walking out into the country to chat with the
farmers, lend a hand, or help a calf stand up
in its freshest morning: do with the obvious:
35little lies behind it. . . .
(1998)
Wrong Road
So I said to the short-order cook (because I
think he owns the joint) what did Santa bring
you: a fairly aggressive bit of humor, since
I hardly know the man: my wife and I stop
5there occasionally on the way to Syracuse
because it is so busy, the eggs are right, and
the waitresses friendly: when he says, Oh,
some of this and that: so I said, a boat:
(checking to see if he was really rich): a
10gun, I said—maybe he was just one of the
guys: I have a lot of guns, he said: well,
I don’t think he ever did say what he got,
some clothes, maybe: he was turning too many
eggs, jigging hash browns: on the way to
_________
15Syracuse, I finished it in my head: he got
angry: who’s asking, he says: so I try to
bring him down: I’m too old to rise up to
risibility: I said, I’m a little older than
you, so I was wondering, because I was disappointed
20in myself when my wife asked me before Xmas
what I wanted for Christmas: I couldn’t think
of anything: what does it mean to want nothing
from Santa: so I just wondered what sort of
thing you might have wanted, or if you had
25liked what you got: well (reader) this last
part doesn’t sound as good as the way it came
to me around Lafayette: I have a little tingle
of fear that the next time I stop there, the
guy will say, listen, buddy, I’m old enough