The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  good Lord there’s one on page 1569

  of the unabridged!

  less

  95than

  noth

  rage, despairing of the

  agencies to lessen its

  flooding oncoming

  100becomes

  nature poetry,

  the shine of boulders,

  the frilliness

  of sphagnum, smoky

  105bogs: rage that must

  contain itself

  changes into the manyness

  of arbovitae tips,

  the shimmying fry of

  110wayward sand, ranges

  cracked wild, buttressed

  for hundreds of miles

  with ravines

  somebody walked on the brook!

  115though underneath the muffled

  discourse went on thought

  not spoken

  scripture of scrawls,

  feet skiing, stopping,

  120turning, climbing the bank:

  cursive

  a crack enters the sodden macadam

  and branches half way across the road

  telling with fracture accuracy

  125of underground swell, strain, give

  death puts a stop to things

  folks, I knew I would never

  get along with them, thick, obscure,

  their knowledge by heart: I knew

  130I belonged to the other order of

  possibility, impossibility:

  I’m not going to have a myth to

  see me through, it looks like: my

  illusions are lumber bookshelves stack:

  135I’m going to face the stripped fact:

  terror will come of that for how can I be

  equal to seeing in the flushed

  colors of snow-pheasants the pheasant

  platter-dead under snow.

  (1977)

  Delineation

  I round the bend

  downslope to my home

  and there

  three miles across the valley

  5the ridge gap

  (where the hills nearly flowed

  together once

  or tried to flow apart) holds

  and my ten or twenty (whatever)

  10years left rush

  up in a whirlwind and

  throw themselves away

  (1978)

  Transcending

  The balloon maker, stalled desire:

  the held

  swells, inflates, winds rush,

  matter bleeds gravity out,

  5suspension

  sucks emptiness in:

  earth renounces such to levitation:

  goodbye,

  rocking balloon, helium sent, goodbye,

  10nodding ascension: saint-high,

  unpressured, pop

  windy seeds to space.

  (1977)

  Fire Going

  Douglas Worth

  had too much

  to bring to

  appear quickly

  5among us:

  others arrived

  early with a flashy

  branch or two:

  Mr. Worth is

  10working

  the hardwood loads.

  (1977)

  Marble

  Never did get down there to Washington:

  but course I heard tell of the place:

  I met a feller once who’d been there

  hisself: said he had: he said the main

  5thing about it was that whichever way you

  went you got lost, them round squares with

  gen’als pointing pistols and swords the wrong

  way: feller said what they call a public

  servant there’s got servants, terrible

  10big cars, and doodads: said you couldn’t

  tell for sure if you’d orter speak to one

  of them—anyway, couldn’t find out where

  any of them was: just think, I said to

  this feller, live your whole life and never

  15see a president: course I heard from

  the president: he sent for Luke, you remember

  Luke: and then every year I send down

  there whatever I got clear: sometimes

  I think maybe I don’t even live in this

  20country or Washington ain’t in the country,

  one: it gets pretty fuzzy: but the Bible

  talks about kings and Nineveh: I reckon

  I know more about Nineveh than Washington.

  1974 (1977)

  One Extreme to the Other

  Three or four miles across

  the lake the ridge land looks

  like an ocean: it waves

  and rolls, but slow:

  5slopes and rondures tell it

  got there flowing, if only

  rising or dissolving:

  walking, I don’t fear my

  fluency with such an averager.

  (1978)

  Thoroughfaring

  Thelma had liver spots on her forehead

  from age thirty or thirty-five on

  and, several children later, a few

  operations, and, I think, pellagra:

  5she died, though, fairly old in her late

  seventies, struck in the head by a big piece

  of farm machinery taking up too much road:

  she was walking home between two houses she

  could see, one where she was born, one

  10where she bore others: later on, a

  locomotive split one of her sons in half—

  lengthwise on a bright railroad rail.

  (1979)

  Spring Lines

  for Jonathan Williams

  Though the northering geese

  lines wobble from sweep-v’s

  to longsided hooks to blue

  hedgerow racers still they

  17are as constant through the

  thousands of years as the ridge

  line cut steadfast in

  stone across steadfast sky.

  (1979)

  Maple

  The gray squirrels, fall-fat, having

  given in and let the few seeds farthest

  out go, the small red squirrel, just

  before snow, breaks out like a tiny fire

  5and, clean sweep, presents to winter a tree so

  naked you wouldn’t believe it survives.

  1979 (1980)

  Quick Song

  The earth is so little!

  We fly in, light, fly away.

  Memory, where did

  _________

  we come from, stop,

  5what was

  the loss we lost?

  Never mind. We fell

  awake in

  sleep and slept again.

  (1980)

  Spiritual Progress

  It drags on a way and, beaten down, dies:

  there may be a nice thing now and then (certainly,

  there is hope for nice things, a swerve away from

  the regular, a coloration unghastly, as if the

  5universe’s own remission, an astonishment like

  provoking a smile with a smile some morning)

  but it drags on, wears white, polishes blur-thin,

  then lunges forward into hereafter: that action,

  flare up, at the end, unassured and maybe not

  10expected, the being caught up closing out, can

  be usefully distracting, a wakefulness

  too alert for grief or regret, a blank start.

  (1981)

  The Gathering

  Where does the locus lie

  or stand, high in a mind-dome

  all arcs

  of knowledge or perception

  _________

  5intersect, a dome constructed

  not just of the mind’s

  own materials

  but the world’s outside,

  the knowledg
es brought in

  10and flung to the mind’s motions

  for shaping: or isn’t

  the dome, if any, actually

  outside, heavenward, beyond

  moon haulings or

  15sun centerings,

  a summary place so high & fine

  its point of equipoise might

  miss matter altogether,

  lying, rising, or falling

  20intermediately, containing

  no matter though calling it all

  into alignment, and

  that dome perceived, hoped or

  imagined, isn’t the mind’s a copy,

  25a lessened figure, if legitimate

  with accurate outline:

  where is the essence of a perception

  or thought, come to think of it:

  and what good is a knowledge

  30only questions trace into defining,

  the truest knowledge the richest

  gathering of forming doubt:

  love, the dumb & tugging yearning,

  undermines us into

  35simpler motions, the lure a single

  place and that place

  circulating throughout us:

  is the dome, the arc-nexus,

  something love fashioned,

  40the sweetest burden

  to impose on the galaxies: maybe, for

  inwardly the libido issues from

  summary extensions, flows through

  our wishes, minds without obstruction

  45(or bleakly with), goes outside

  and includes what is and builds

  it up, so that the dome stands

  radiant as an eye,

  transfixing as the majesty of

  50a nipple not yet touched:

  or does love go just so far,

  its net gathering the couplings,

  families, friends, peoples

  but then transferring its force

  55to the severe redemptions of

  harsh necessity: when we lie

  dying, what are we to think:

  of the light that would seem

  to have no undoing in the head

  60even though commonly the

  head rots off: or are we to think

  on the unending brilliance

  way overhead that doesn’t quail to

  darkness, but may never have

  _________

  65known it produces us or lets

  us go: how could we have been

  produced except by knowing means:

  there in the center the face

  we’ve found freedom to impose

  70without imposition invites us to

  come along, saying yes to losses:

  beyond the sun, the mind’s sun shines.

  1983 (1984)

  Plain Divisions

  Limber and fluttery as lombardies,

  not half as tall and not well-neighbored

  with fellows in a windbreak row,

  he felt the cold coming, the northwind

  5spilling geese south in a high slide:

  and not like the lombardies confined

  to one place, he felt the shivery

  embranchments of maybe he should go or

  not, blowing away worse or not than

  10being blown against or up (winds hunt roots)—

  where are the wind’s roots, where are the twists

  the northwind unwinds wound, that

  test the roots of the rootless lonely:

  he shook like a concert of leafless

  15particulars, the geese quick-talking overhead.

  1976 (1985)

  Taking Place

  Some of these old widow women around here are roving

  loners: no matter how deep the snow or bitterly near

  zero the air, they are long-gaited out in their boots

  and gone: one woman’s high hip, a radial, spins each

  5step outwardly in advancing: and one’s eyes set ahead

  behind gravity-laced curtains

  just so as to miss the tips of cedars and fix on

  the distant ridge: and one carries a droopy net bag

  emptied or to be filled though neither empty nor full

  10that suggests she could take off on a long trip at any

  moment in any direction without the slightest

  inconvenience or surprise: one has a leaning shoulder so

  she sidles listing, listening with one side of her

  head and eyeing the ditch at once, but

  15I’ve seen her on both sides of town in a morning:

  I don’t know where they go, not out to eat, because

  often they don’t have their teeth in, I don’t know what

  they buy or sell: mostly they go, perhaps it is the motion,

  going, and, going, they rise through lattices of

  20achievement till enchantment fills their heads with

  sky and the wind rises in them like love or death, and

  will designs them a mind of its own and makes it up.

  1979 (1985)

  Breaking for the Broken

  There is no listener in the universe—

  I thought my words, careful sayings,

  would be heard by a lasting presence

  _________

  and not just heard

  5but heard revised by undiminishable

  understanding, my flaws

  shocked clear, my foolishness filled

  out and bent right—

  the hearing of my misguidances,

  10the tiny screaming

  of the once and for all hurt,

  the hearing that would build the true

  poem never getting back to me:

  but there is no fine listener out there

  15and the robin doesn’t listen and the brook

  doesn’t, neither do the simplest

  noxious or sweet weeds, and

  the lake answers not in my kind

  when it rises or ruffles: child, perhaps,

  20old woman, maybe, or young man

  thrown away—these who may sound out

  a few syllables and not even mumble the puzzlers

  or who may be abused to words as a resort,

  tears more punctuation than

  25sense can stand, or who may listen

  to get the sound of saying better right—

  these hapless are among my sweetest listeners

  and if they hear (they may not know how)

  hearing may do them good a minute

  30where the eternal

  _________

  altitudes overspan too much majesty

  to break the silence over, hold to

  a majesty sense only manages to blemish.

  1979 (1986)

  Could Be

  When I

  am with

  someone I

  feel the

  5company may

  not be

  all it

  could be

  (1986)

  Marking Time

  The male ringneck picks across hard

  snow at dawn, his tail feathers

  flustered sideways in the side wind,

  but his head down against the wind,

  5he is as in fight or strut, his mind

  on hens, March roaring up on the east rim

  behind him: he fades into a brush

  spot and, out of wind into breeze,

  his tail feathers fall sleek

  _________

  10and he slinks like a brook trickle

  into hiding: how right hedgerows along

  snowfields are for lone pheasant.

  1982 (1986)

  Noted Imposition

  Some people say why

  be a pastoral poet when

  there’s no more

  pasture, just

  5blacktop and gas spills

  (still room in Montana

  but its reality

  isn’t
concentrated):

  what’s wrong, I say,

  10with a few illusory sheep

  (they don’t take up much

  room even in Montana)

  or pill-less nymphs

  dousing or douching in

  15fountains now & then

  or a moon with no small

  steps on it: why be

  mere redundance to

  city soot and waste

  20water from kill floors:

  pipes never trilled to any

  real world, not even the

  pastoral, but any

  place they trill is

  25a goodly, pleasant land.

  (1986)

  Summer Fashion

  The beachscene’s gulls

  and busted shells,

  beach fleas and the dark

  eyes of the fiddlercrab holes,

  5how trivial,

  poetic, and old!

  now high tide scallops

  up the beach

  and plants a plastic daisy

  10at your feet, streaks out