The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1
Page 6
the armies quite unwound
the intentions of the fire
and snuffed the black reeds smoking out
but like destroyed mountains
20left deposits
that will insure
deep mulch for next year’s shoots
the greenest hope
autumn ever
25left this patch of reeds
The Grass Miracles
The grass miracles have kept me down all autumn
purpose turning on me like an inward division
The grasses heading barbed tufts
airy panicles and purple spikes
5have kept me stalled in the deadends
of branching dreams
It is as though I had started up the trunk
and then dispersed like ant trails
along the branches
10and out on the twigs
and paused dipping with a golden thought
at the points of the leaves
A black stump hidden
in grass and old melon vines
15has reined my hurry
and I have gone up separately
jiggling like a bubble flock
in globes of time
I have not been industrious this autumn
20It has seemed necessary
to accomplish everything with a pause
bending to part the grass
to what round fruit
becoming entangled in clusters
25tying all the future up
in variations on present miracles
I Came in a Dark Woods Upon
I came in a dark woods upon
an ineffaceable difference
and oops embracing it
felt it up and down mindfully
5in the dark
prying open the knees to my ideas
It was slim and hard
with a sharp point
and stood up
10its shaft shot deep as a pile
Who will extract I said desiring
a public value this erect
difference from the ground
and the dryads
15shifting in the limbs
dipped leaves
blotting the angels’ roofeyes out
Taking the neck below the barbs
I eased the wet shaft up into my hands
20Everything retired
The dryads took body in the oakhearts
The angels shuttered their wintry peepholes
and flew off throneward across the fields
and the trees arms-up leaned as in wind away
25and casting the difference
I splintered
the whole environment
and somewhat dazed with grief ran
catching it up hot in my hands
30and hurled it far into the seas
a brother to Excalibur
A Treeful of Cleavage Flared Branching
A treeful of cleavage flared branching
through my flesh and cagey
I sat down mid-desert
and heaping hugged up between my knees
5an altarcone from the sand
and addressed it with water dreams
The wind
chantless of rain in the open place
spun a sifting hum
10in slow circles round my sphere of grief
and the sun
inched countless arms
under the periphery of my disc of sight
eager for the golden thing
15There must be time I said
to dream real these dreams
and the sun
startled by the sound of time
said Oh
20and whirling in his arms
ran off across the sky
Heaping the sand
sharpening the cone of my god I said
I have oracles to seek
25Drop leaf shade
the wet cuticle of the leaf tipped in shade
yielded belief
to the fixed will and there
where the wind like wisdom
30sweeps clean the lust prints of the sun
lie my bones entombed
with the dull mound of my god
in bliss
[Behind the I]
Behind the I
I is
an I
elated
5leaves
into
separables
Falling too through scopes of
variables
10I
in the
I-beam is some
for the moment accidental mote
Behind the I
15I discloses
flows
winds and seas
of particles
while he conceived outside
20is whole
beyond realities
I
never wants to lose
One Composing
One composing seminal works sat oblivious
by a brothel
and gave leaflets to the functions of the wind
saying
5Time is a liquid orb
where we swim loose
timeless in a total time
pursuing among the nuclear sediment
the sweet pale flakes of old events
10Stopping I watched the leaflets rock upward
from the windy alley
and brought him a mug of stout
The contemporary he said
turning into the brothel
15is an orb’s shell
of light
within the liquid orb
and fertility came into him like a virtuoso
and mounting pubic realms
20he rode galloping through the night
sweetsap and rain playing marbles
on the wind’s speed of his outstretched shirt
One
weeping beads of ice
25down the cold deserts of his brain
cried from the street O Jezebel
and the seminal one rose wiping saying
In exhaustion’s death are dregs of wanted sleep
In the Wind My Rescue Is
In the wind my rescue is
in whorls of it
like winged tufts of dreams
bearing
5through the forms of nothingness
the gyres and hurricane eyes
the seed safety
of multiple origins
I set it my task
10to gather the stones of earth
into one place
the water modeled sand molded stones
from
the water images
15of riverbeds in drought
from the boundaries of the mind
from
sloping farms
and altitudes of ice and
20to mount upon the highest stone
a cardinal
chilled in the attitude of song
But the wind has sown loose dreams
in my eyes
25and telling unknown tongues
drawn me out beyond the land’s end
and rising in long
parabolas of bliss
borne me safety
30from all those ungathered stones
1954
[I should have stayed longer idle]
I should have stayed longer idle
and done reverence
to it
waterfalls
5humbling in silent slide
the precipice of my effrontery
poured libations of arms
like waterwheels
toward the ground but
10knowing the fate of sunset things
I grew desperate and entertained it
with sudden sprints
somersaults
and cartwheels figuring eight
15It would not stay
Ring of cloud I said
high pale ringcloud
ellipsis of evening moment’s miracle
where will I go looking for your return
20and rushing to the rim
I looked down into the deep dissolution
I should have held still
before it
and been mute
25cancelled by an oak’s trunk
and done honors unseen
and taken the beauty sparingly
as one who fears to move and
shatter vision from his eyes
A Crippled Angel
A crippled angel bent in a scythe of grief
mourned in an empty lot
Passing by I stopped
amused that immortality should grieve
5and said
It must be exquisite
Smoke came out of the angel’s ears
the axles
of slow handwheels of grief
10and under the white lids of its eyes
bulged tears of purple light
Watching the agony diffuse in
shapeless loss
I interposed a harp
15The atmosphere possessed it eagerly
and the angel
saying prayers for the things of time
let its fingers drop and burn
the lyric strings provoking wonder
20Grief sounded like an ocean rose
in bright clothes
and the fire
breaking out on the limbs rising
caught up the branching wings
25in a flurry of ascent
Taking a bow I shot transfixing
the angel midair
all miracle hanging fire
on rafters of the sky
Dropping Eyelids Among the Aerial Ash
Dropping eyelids among the aerial ash
I ascending entered the gates of cloud
westward where the sliver moon
keeled in sun was setting
5and sat down on a silver lining to think
my mind splintered with spears of glass
and errors of the cold
Below
the gorged god lay on the leveled city
10and suburban bandaged
and drowsily tolled the reckonless waste
The clouds mushrooming rose
and held about his head
like old incense of damp altars
15Oh I said in the mistral of bleached
and naked thought
blood like a catalyst is evil’s baptismal need
before the white rose and benefactions
rise
20thin curls of hope from cooling lakes of ruin
and chiseled stone wins
from the spout of human sacrifice
powers of mercy
Darkness pushed the sliver moon
25from my silver lining and I arose
the high seed clouds fading
and went back down into the wounds and cries
and held up lanterns for the white nurses
moving quickly in the dark
I Came Upon a Plateau
I came upon a plateau
where mesquite roots
crazed the stone
and rains
5moved glinting dust
down the crevices
Calling off rings
to a council of peaks
I said
10Spare me man’s redundancy
and putting on bright clothes
sat down in the flat orthodoxy
Quivering with courtesy
a snake drew thrust in sines
15and circles from his length
rearing coils of warning white
Succumbing in the still ecstasy
sinuous through white rows of scales
l caved in upon eternity
20saying this use is colorless
A pious person his heart
looted and burnt
sat under a foundation
a windy cloak clutched round his bones
25and said
When the razed temple cooled
I went in
and gathered these
relics of holy urns
30Behold beneath this cloak
and I looked in
at the dark whirls of dust
The peaks coughing bouldered
laughter shook to pieces
35and the snake shed himself in ripples
across a lake of sand
Doxology
I
Heterodoxy with Ennui
Should I bold in a moment intrude
upon a silence, hold my hands properly,
crossed, in a mock eternity,
would someone use my lips
5for an expiation?
I have heard the silent owl near death
sees wildly with the comprehension of fire;
have drunk from those eyes.
Transplanted my soul to the wind, wound
10my days round the algae of rapid streams,
wedded my bones to the throat of flame,
spirited.
You have heard it said of old time
the streets shall flow blood, but the streets
15swept out with the flood
shall be deposited upon sand.
You have this word for a fulfillment.
An unconstrained fluidity prevails, abides;
whole notes are rocks
20and men thirty-seconds,
all in descending scales,
unvigiled bastardies of noise:
the motion of permanence.
Marble, pottery, signs endure,
25support fluency, scrollwork,
where violins ornament, fingers,
offended with needles of care,
articulate poised domes.
This love for the thin and fleet
30will race through the water-content
of my heavy death.
I die at the vernal equinox
and disorder like a kissing bug
quaffs my bonds: if I ascend,
35I shall be congratulatory,
but if they fawn, desire
a season before immortality.
Detain me among the spiral designs
of an ancient amphora: fulfillment
40comes before me like spiral designs
on an ancient amphora in which detain me,
fixed in rigid speed.
II
Orthodoxy with Achievement
Silent as light in dismal transit
through the void, I, evanescent,
45sibilant among my parts,
fearing the eclipse of a possible glance
and not glancing, shut-eyed,
crouch froglike upon my brain,
hover and keep dark,
50fervor opposed by dread,
activity numbed by its mixed result,
till some awaited drop falls
upon the mound and chaos
perfects the eternity of my silence.
55I cannot count the forms,
thrown upon the wheel, delineated,
that have risen and returned
without accretion; but the spirit
drops falling upon wings
60and preens the day with its call:
none say where in the silence it sleeps.
Though the sound of my voice
is a firmamental flaw, my self, in the rockheart,
in southern oakmoss blown tangled,
65its supple pincers snaring
new forks of life, braiding thin limbs
of the wateroak on gooseberry hills
beside swamps where the raccoon runs
and dips his paw in the run-of-the-swampin
70musky branchwater for darting crawfish
scuttling a mudwake before them; my self,
voluble in the dark side of hills
and placid bays, while the sun grows
increasing atmosphere to the sea,
75correcting the fault of dawn; my self,
the drought of unforested plains,
the trilobite’s voice,
the loquacity of an alien room troubled
by a blowfly, requires my entertainment
80while we learn the vowels of silence.
III
Paradox with Variety
The temple stands in a rainforest
where bones have a quick ending.
Ephemeral as wings in fire
transparent leaves droop in the earth-steam;
85growth and decay swallow the traces
of recent paths.
I went in. On one side sat the god of creation; on the other,
the god of destruction. Hatred held their eyes. Going deeper
to the next chamber, I found the god of destruction and the
90god of creation tangled sensually on the floor; they gnawed
and procreated. In the next chamber was majesty: one god
sat staring at his golden walls.
I hear an organ playing through the morning rain;
it sounds like the memory of quilting women.
95Between the organ and me, California poppies furl
like splotches of conceit
in the light and silent rain.
A robin peeks up from the grass
and rattles a ladybug in his beak.
100Mr. Farnham says
life is fearfully complex.
When I was lustful I drew twenty maidens
from the Well of Sacrifice
and took them to Cozumel.
105The priests of the steep temples
longed to smear my body
with blue ointment.
We’ve all died since
and all has been forgotten.
110Strangers drop pebbles