by A. R. Ammons
end, and you
740are as before,
unborn
/ / /
to be present in
the present is also
745to be present in
the past and in the
future: whereas,
not to be present
now is not to be
750present in any
time:
/ / /
at length he came
to me and beseeched
755me, what is the
truth: if you
believe it, it’s
the truth, I sd,
offering no
760supportive evidence
/ / / /
put not your faith
in beauty, at
least, not in one:
765when one beauty
goes, get another
one
IV
FABULOUS ABS
770IV
integrity, you
say, integrity:
isn’t that just
another exaggeration
775by which you
(madly) separate
yourself from
others, the mumbl
ed mess: heist
780yourself up on
such a cutting
little slice of
solid adherence
and the world will
785not be able to
edge itself around
you without getting
hurt: making
yourself noticeably
790inconvenient—oh,
my:
---
fantasy, you know,
governs one’s
795sharpest realities
and greatest needs:
if the fantasy
fails, so fails
the flesh
800***
the rich are
concerned about
what they have &
the poor are
805concerned about
having nothing:
it’s as foolish to
well, what—well:
: :
810a system driving
to reach the top
on reaching the
top runs out of
drive (that’s
815because “top”
provided a direct
ion but being at
the top provides
too many direction
820s) (all 360, all
downhill):
his race is run
he’s overdone
son of a gun
825he had no fun
_________
but then again
if pain is gain
he’s one more rich
son of a bitch
830except of course
just a corse
makes no distinction
in extinction
between having or
835having had or
fun in the sun
or gain in the rain
-
1997
Late Scene
So! the stem of the flower
of your transcendence
roots in your rear end,
the rear end bulb-scented,
5but the stem? if
the flower doesn’t smell
can it be, except to a
few, equally disgusting:
what, after all, are you
10doing way up—or down there,
cruising effortlessly about beyond
contamination, beyond, by
_________
the way, the entanglements of others,
the wing-binding needs of
15the older feeble, the smelly
young, the endlessly lasting
twine of loyalty: do the
depths rise when height lessens:
do they come together
20flattened, horizontal,
when you look around and, bedazzled,
long to know what here is, this.
1997
Speaking
There will be rains I’ll need
no shelter from; cold winds
no walls need broach the chill of for me:
when fire splits seams
5out of the ground, I won’t
need the warmth at all: love, even,
when you who have given
your days to me, when you
come close, I won’t sense
10that last approach: not
knowing how to speak,
I’ll say nothing.
1997
Good as Done
my miseries, no worse than most people’s,
are not as bad as some’s: there comes Aunt
Kate across the field, the storm brewed blue,
the wind collapsing her apron, her
5young’uns straggled out behind her: Ruby Lee’s
got the sore eyes again, matter
matting them shut crisp:
when we young’uns used to be mischievous, Ma
would say we were “cutting up”:
10Stop cutting up like that: was she
ahead of the Cool School:
what, my mother: who knows how
influence winds underground: those boys
were not just mischievous with words, their
15words made no sense, it was like we
used to do, just blurting silence out like tongues:
the New York School, certain of
the members thereof, were so beautifully
intelligent they perceived that the world
20was worth what they could give
it, the tongue, inaccessible to inquiry, and
inert to nuance: great literary movements
have been founded on minor gestures: can you
imagine: aren’t we pitiful: it is, in its way
_________
25no more advanced than one baboon’s upping his
rear in the face of another (baboon) for inspections
of feasibility, so to speak: they say great
works require great themes: just the
requirement turns me off: if it’s
30required, then I’m bound to fiddle around with
incidences of triviality: oh, how great a
theme triviality is, I would confuse myself and
others (if any) by saying: how slight a big
mania is compared with stopping to note a
35curled worm in the petiole of a rose
leaf: the leaf ragged, the worm asleep, some
bad nightwork going on: night, the stars, a
fear of day-birds, the heavens and the earth
are united in a cosmos, etc.: oceans are deep
40but one can be well drowned in a puddle, esp.
if one has fallen forward into the delights of the vine:
what is depth’s measuring
stick, anyhow: mount a great show, high as
deep, a neutrino will go right through it, lots
45of neutrinos, neutrinos so fine they rarely
touch anything: don’t you think that
given the rhetoric, or even without it, one
thing is as big as another, it’s just that one
bears all the postures of the big while the
50other, etc.: well, there you are: I will not
_________
write if I am required to do anything: no
money, no requirement: no, I have enough money
already, social security: no, I will require
myself to do something small: my theme
55will piss away inklings
under surmises: a spot of rust on a Cadillac
bumper blows the mind away. . . .
1997
Contested Ground
When is it too late to start over:
is it never too late or always too late:
&n
bsp; when your arteries plaque stiff, should
you give up animal fat: butter and #2 milk,
5too: or if you are more than a hair into
onset diabetes, should you take all day to
eat an apple, a slice at a time, one
a day: supposing cartilage
thins around your hipbones, possibly from
10standing or sitting too much, should you start
balling the jack, those grating bones
gnawing each other up: such a problem, such
a challenge to the will, to windy decision: I
wonder, though, if you can start over
15too soon, give up fat before you
have the merest film against the cold or give
up milk before your bones have designed
their figure: too late, too soon to start too soon.
1997
Right Call
This old man, a lump with a hat on it,
red nose, ugly cane, lounges on one of
Wal-Mart’s inside wooden benches: a
blonde old woman, wife or near wife, comes
5up to him and tells him about something
she wants, I couldn’t hear what: “how
much do you need,” he says, leaning over
to the right to get his backpocket wallet
out: “I don’t know,” she says—what
10appealing uncertainty! opening up rooms
for truth and trust: “five or ten dollars,”
she says, and he gives her a ten: I bet
if she’d asked for a ten he’d have questioned
her beyond a five: the little stories!
15where hardly anything happens except the world.
1997
Religious Feeling
1
it’s rude to blurt the unexpected out
when it is perilously significant
for example, I have a new structure of feeling
to offer, perhaps religious feeling, what is
5it, where
does it come from, how does it acquire or
attain force,
such allegiance apparently unforced and
volunteering: the reason I can tell you
10little about it right now is that I
haven’t come on the form, you know, that
marshals and husbands procedures of such high
approach: but awaiting that—form, I mean—
I display here the figure:
15hierarchy, of which more later, builds up in
peaks until, massively, it exceeds
the limits of earth and projects, still
yearningly, into incorporeal space, taking
with it, though,
20the pure symmetries of feeling that inform
and underlie it, till it concludes (or does
not) where one neither sees, nor knows, nor
commands, out where the hand cannot take hold
and the gold spills away unarrested:
2
25the extent to which you identify with your
pyramid is the measure of your peace: without
question, you are without conflict: your
relations with others of your tribe will take
root in trust and mutual aid: no one will spy
30or tell on you, for there will be nothing to
tell except your total and faithful loyalty:
you will not need to be, or fear to be,
_________
needled out and hanged by the thread: you will
belong: your bell curve may ring vehemently
35against another, but your bell will be clear:
to object is to become solitary: to be
solitary is to be endangered, uncompanioned:
therefore, for the sweet hope of being in
belonging, finaglings at the top (as with
40Richard III) may be allowed, silenced in the
secrecy of the pragmatic cost of knowing: for
so much, so much:
3
the hierarchy, about which more earlier, also
later, extends from the thinnest slice thru
45the playground, through the head of the family
(man or woman), through small business, big
business, Red Cross, Pastorate, Popedom, on
up to the Big One, man or woman, in fact, the
Biggest One, the Most High: there can be only
50one there or one there there: you cannot have
at the top two of equal force because if they
disagree—or oppose one another—locking
may ensue: nobody can do anything: two of
equal or near equal force inhabit the realm
55just below the One, but below that three may
come to a decision, neglecting the time when
two are yes and one nay: the decision, then,
_________
is not perfect—not as it can be with One
where the decision can be perfect even if in
60the One are contained reservations that churn
the gut: mass votes give expression to every
nuance of contradiction yet produce decision:
that way a large part of the populace can
churn as if a lengthy string of the gut: it
65is extremely important to achieve the order
of decision and painful sacrifices to that
order are ordered and allowed (in silence)
(or public spectacle): hangings, hangins,
hangings: decapitations: quarterings: pole
70heisting, tell me about it: the imperium will
sit still and the people look away (or else
show up for the flames): don’t mess with me:
what you renounce as inhuman and not native
is hidden for you by the golden skins and blue
75eyes of desire, but I, I see right through to
the skinned wire of necessity:
4
this is my specialty, not knowing what I’m doing
5
Lord, how I have looked for a guide! Shrinks,
daybooks, astrallists, peepshows, the homed &
80homeless. Where is anyone to go to find
anyone going, going where one is wont to
go? 900 numbers can provide the motive but,
alas, it’s all metaphor. I really don’t care
for capital letters and periods, stuff like that
6
85you wouldn’t think gas
would rhyme with ass
some extra sibilance there?
7
say to yourself what would make you feel
good such as everything is all right to
90me then there will be
a scattering of exceptions like poppy seed
under your dentures you will be able to
endure because of the comfort of your
saying
95think what it would be like just to live
with poppy seed under your dentures
8
we are dealing with a splintery weave of
surface which contains instances of the
present but also what is ancient and come
100again as well as what is ancient still—
like last night, the winter winds high,
gusts sizzled in the twigs but underlying
was a general roar, muted
and invariant
105or you could say what will make you feel
good I love everybody and shovel the flack
you are not
going to decide
what life is
110to be but
nevertheless decide what
life is to
be
9
ahoy, are there any slam-dunk libertarians
115among us: out there: hullo-o-o-o
10
my wife’s hobby habit is
watching the
ticker tape ripple by like a brook or
flicker like a fireplace, nature and
nurture at its best: it is like
120cars pouring around a distant mountain
or like cows filing into the headbutt
house, most compelling: sequences of
glitter that remove one (possibly my wife)
to the imagined land or neverland, kiddo
11
125when the tornado fines up at the swirl it
can come right down the street down the
hill, across the water, and right into
your snapdragons: such intense
organizations, such pointed writing
130into furrows lightning and thunder can
bring to bear: I wonder if a salmon has
ever tried to swim up a waterspout, shd
say leap: loaded with ripe eggs, gravid:
12
I feel that I have always been writing
135about what I am writing about now except
it never meant quite what it means now:
I mean, it is that everything disappears
at the height of unity: worship, which
we extend to lords and ladies (and even
140more to kings and queens) is at the top,