The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  30you don’t have to ask me what Santa brought me

  and I’ll say, well, it’s Easter now, and I’m

  not going to ask about those eggs. . . .

  Way Down Upon the Woodsy Roads

  Don’t you think poetry should be succinct:

  not now: I think it should be discinct: it

  should wander off and lose its way back and

  then bump into a sign and have to walk home:

  5who gives a hoot about these big-Mack trucks

  of COMPRESSION: what are the most words for

  _________

  the least: take your cute little compact and

  don’t tell me anything about it: just turn me

  loose, let me rattle my ole prattle: poetry

  10springs greatest from deepest depths: well,

  let her whistle: how shallow can anything

  get: (rhyming on the front end): I do not

  believe that setting words to rhyme and meter

  turns prose into poetry, and having written

  15some of the shortest poems, I now like to

  write around largely into any precinct (not

  succinct) or pavilion (a favorite word) I fall

  in with: I have done my duty: I am a happy

  man: I am at large: life sho is show biz:

  20make room for the great presence of nothing:

  do you never long to wander off: from the

  concentrations: for it is one thing to fail

  of them and another never to have intended

  them: the love nest, men, becomes a solid

  25little (mortgaged) colonial: duty becomes your

  chief commendation: the animal in you, older

  than your kind, longs to undertake the heavy

  freedom of going off by himself into the wide

  periphery of chance and surprise, pleasure or

  30terror: oh, come with me, or go off like me,

  if only in the deep travels of your soul, and

  let your howl hold itself in through all the

  _________

  forests of the night: it’s the shortest day:

  the sun is just now setting behind the branch

  35of the crabapple tree it always sets behind

  this day of the year. . . .

  DRAB POT

  APPENDIX A:

  Poems Published During Ammons’s Lifetime but Uncollected

  It Is As Far

  It is as far inward as outward:

  the inward bursts at last to dying particles;

  the outward receding the approach of light

  runs out of time,

  5the mind fleet and nervous as a rat

  along the dark galactic arms.

  I have juxtaposed too much

  weighing hot eloquence against infinity;

  determining the proper

  10dimension of dust, whether

  atom, earth, or universe; stepping

  outside myself to

  expose the operation of benignancy.

  Shall I be fragmentary and fire-baptized:

  15or still and whole like a cycle?

  I pray the Word was not a Squeak that circled out

  enclosing worlds and greater worlds beyond

  fusing with shoreless infinity.

  (1956)

  11-25-56

  The nights dark now

  the moon rises with dawn

  a shallop on the sea of distant trees

  overtaken

  5a thing

  sacrificed before the golden coming sun

  a late unfailing greeter of my tears

  Help me to love what

  vanishes and rest

  10Oh hold me white thing Achilles knew

  1956 (1958)

  Hymn

  Make lean the vowels of my lips

  Do not let my words shimmer the placid

  waters of your eternity

  Leave my skull in the open the

  5wind can get to

  saying the things the wind says curving round

  the cool guidance of a bone

  The sounds of the times do not drown

  the nearly silenced fears

  10Let me relieving hear those fears speak

  away from jangled roaring men

  Who can be numbed by noise should hallow it

  sounding in the violent obliteration of his fear

  his lonely helpful decibel they say

  15You who cannot write simplify

  the vocabulary of my eyes

  Let me move into the fringe of silence

  where my words may have their slow revolving birth

  for a diary to your eyes

  20in the throats of silent men

  1957 (1959)

  Slippery Log Swamp

  So came to a cross-water

  and felled a cypress

  and went over:

  that was a hundred years ago:

  5the cypress sagging into the water

  turned green and

  made a name,

  Slippery Log Swamp:

  downstream a white bridge now

  10growls at passing cars,

  few cars:

  two miles further the superhighway

  burns on false, high, nameless ground:

  cypress log has eased underwater:

  15the name is gone,

  the way has been forgotten:

  those who spoke the name,

  their

  dogs running across

  20ahead of them,

  have shut their mouths

  under harder names:

  the swamp is still: you can’t

  get across: it looks as if

  25it hadn’t aged a day

  for a hundred years:

  the going under of log, name, and memory.

  1961 (1962)

  Canto 46

  you say I have no form:

  if you read me so you can prove

  I have no form

  I will not care

  5whether I have any form

  or not: I may be

  poetizing, a stream

  improvising to the sea:

  maybe I’m making a moat,

  10a round one, or

  maybe a square one:

  I may be laying out an intricate

  network of ditches to

  irrigate the drab country of

  15your brain: read me

  enough to find out

  (O people, memorize some lines!) and

  I will not care: I do not really care

  of course whether you read me

  20or not: it’s your

  problem: if you read me

  though you will have to read me well

  or you will not know how to answer your

  questions: you say I have

  25no form: you may be right:

  it is after all

  to be questioned whether

  one should poetize or make poems; that

  is, whether one should take up

  30poetry as navigation

  _________

  or in order to make

  ships: philosophers have

  the same problem you know,

  whether to make systems or

  35simply to philosophize:

  they can’t decide:

  neither can I: it is a

  tug-of-war, polar tension: the

  chief thing to know about

  40polar tension

  is that it is

  built in and can be

  no more resolved than you can

  resolve a stone: when I

  45come across

  such a

  thing I

  leave

  it for

  50later

  de

  vel

  op

  m

  1959 (1962)

  Canto 24

  from the multiplicities of underbrush

 
the party,

  in unmapped country,

  halted: minds

  5rushed with relief into pause’s

  void:

  feet punctured, limb-wept

  eyes, legs liver raw, arms filigreed

  thrusting the blade to the one stem

  10under the profusion of limbs:

  clothes ripped:

  mosquitoes, greenheads,

  the possible, frightened mocassin:

  halted, looked around, considered:

  15longed for a river

  clearing, shore,

  slope or prairie, for direction

  over-riding

  the small wounds, the hunger, the sung

  20sleeplessness, the

  actual branches; an

  enunciation of purpose, affirmation,

  a concision, limiting:

  “where are we?”

  25“keep moving”:

  “moving, we

  may go deeper”:

  “moving is the only

  _________

  way out”:

  30from a wet, shuddering, malarial

  face, “leave me”:

  a tall longleaf

  pine nearby, the leader said, “by pausing to

  rise, we

  35may seeing ahead

  gain time on the underbrush: who

  can climb this tree?”

  one offered but halfway up the limbless trunk

  sank against

  40the bark and had to fail:

  another gained the limbs but the blue

  glaze of dusk falling

  closed him in:

  next morning,

  45another climber, bough high, cried

  “smoke!”

  “what is it, a woods-fire?”

  “a column,

  still”:

  50“where?”

  “north of the morning”:

  “a dead tree,

  lightning lit”: “a stump remaining,

  burning in

  55the roots”:

  “we can’t see”:

  “what do you see?” “two columns,

  three!”

  “come down,” the leader

  60said, “get out your trinkets:

  _________

  set your minds to

  cunning and preparedness: we

  will try

  the habitation of men—peace or war”:

  (1963)

  View

  From the boardwalk looked down into the sun,

  the clear disc mirrored in wet sand, a surrounding

  atmosphere blue, sandblur, haze, and still

  another atmosphere of loss of light into gray sand:

  5curious to see the sun grounded and small, held

  in the wide day of its own light, to see a sand-piper

  run across and not get burned, the only hiss and

  steam that of breakers caving in to sizzle the level

  upward reach: wide enough to get lost in myself,

  10I feel more fear than pride: too wide, too wide

  is loss of center, a peripheral concern

  tugging center to a peripheral center, not true:

  looked down and saw (seeing and believing) that

  though wide and lost, I might hope to stumble on

  15an image of myself sharp and whole, all wider being

  brought in small: no fear of sun or self.

  (1963)

  Sung Reassertions

  after a poem by William Carlos Williams

  The cock announces dominion

  to the morning: does

  not wake uncertain whether

  to claim the field

  21or sneak away pheasant-like

  through the grass: the sun,

  his embassy of light, colors

  the throne-room of his breast:

  his cry obliterates the stars:

  26from farm to farm

  the kingdoms are laid out,

  each call a challenge

  and congratulation,

  sung reassertion

  31dispelling

  the threat of night that clouds blends

  obscures

  melts into one, shapes lost,

  boundaries drifting,

  36the dark coop floating through time:

  the scream of precise outlines!

  of defended orders

  commanding the insurrections

  of dream and night:

  41the cock wakes, crows, treads,

  feeds, fights, sleeps: sleeps

  fitfully, impatient

  of time’s insinuating treachery,

  and crows defiantly in the middle

  46of the night.

  (1963)

  Connection

  The sumac thicket

  on the bay’s bank-edge

  emits

  _________

  under cloud-closed skies

  5an

  intervaled squeak:

  trusting, I

  make a bird

  and place

  10it in there, responsible—

  and things

  go on as usual.

  1963 (1964)

  Community

  The toeless pigeon in the park

  kept balance on the stubs, frequently

  used his wings—short flights:

  got around: though

  5there were certain actions he was excluded from:

  couldn’t rise

  and hang on the hand rich with grain: lost

  all quick maneuvers for the scattered grain:

  managed to come in an active second

  10but got remnants when surprises of bounty fell:

  did you think me whole?

  whose heart is broken owns my broken heart.

  The man sat on the steps in the cold morning sun

  and tried to be interested in the children,

  15their games loud with action and joy:

  traffic spurned past, brilliant buicks, people

  caught up in accelerations of things to be done,

  society commanding and needing them: and the

  man turned his eyes here and there

  20across the gas and tried to light in distant trees,

  and there was not any single way that he could fly

  nor any net of necessity he could get caught by:

  did you think me whole?

  whose heart is broken owns my broken heart.

  25The angels ascended burdened with the light burdens

  of burning souls and song kept breaking out new

  in clusters that blended in and the

  luminous words seemed all of a consonance

  as if nothing could go wrong, harmony

  30having delivered everything to grace:

  one soul half-dark at the foot of the ladder

  reached out to touch a busy angel’s shoulder,

  saying, wait, those aren’t the words I know, I don’t

  understand that music: wait, O blissful foreigner:

  35did you think me whole?

  whose heart is broken owns my broken heart.

  (1965)

  A Birth of Winter

  There is a warmth in rot

  winter can’t reach into fully

  to quench: the stray

  that sat a few weeks ago in a sun-warmed nook

  5by the door

  and then went away—

  I thought back home—

  went away completely

  into death

  10behind my evergreens: last week

  sent up into sunlight,

  after a night below freezing, its

  _________

  first singing wreath of blue-green

  flowers, huge fast flies

  15that caught the morning sun

  out of frost and used the day as a summer:

  I can see I can’t trust winter to put an end to this,

  so tomorrow,
fur in high heat riding

  the shovel, I’ll take that special piece of

  20summer to a grave’s

  exact winter—and cut flowers don’t last long.

  (1965)

  Urban Rage

  Hiawathum say,

  Hey, Dad,

  they’s rainbow grease on the water:

  Man, thas motor oil

  5say Hiawathum’s Dad

  Dad, say Hiawathum, how comes the fish

  is lying up belly-white

  under the rainbow

  Man, say Hiawathum’s Dad,

  10because they’s dead

  Hiawathum say, Dad, I seen one wasn’t dead:

  his mouth was sucking little

  circles in the rainbow