The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1

by A. R. Ammons

into the Hole of Water:

  it is too still.

  Should I mistake khaki blood on foreign snow

  for cherry ices, my mind would freeze;

  115but Red blood is interesting:

  its vessels on the snow

  are museums of eternity.

  When stone and drought meet in high places,

  the hand instructed by thirst

  120chips grace into solidity and Hellas,

  like a broken grape upon marmoreal locks,

  clarifies eternity. Had I come in the season

  when sheep nibble windy grasses,

  I would have gone out of the earth

  125listening for grasses

  and the stippling feet of sheep

  on sinking rocks.

  I like to walk down windowless corridors

  and going with the draft

  130feel the boost of perpendicularity,

  directional and rigid;

  concision of the seraphim,

  artificial lighting.

  Sometimes the price of my content

  135consumes its purchase

  and martyrs’ cries, echoing my peace,

  rise sinuously like smoke

  out of my ashen soul.

  1952

  EXPRESSIONS OF SEA LEVEL (1964)

  to Phyllis

  Raft

  I called the wind and it

  went over with me

  to the bluff

  that keeps the sea-bay

  5and we stayed around for a while

  trying to think

  what to do:

  I took some time to watch

  the tall reeds

  10and bend their tassels

  over to my touch

  and

  as the lowering bay-tide left

  salt-grass

  15combed flat toward the land

  tried to remember

  what I came to do:

  in the seizures,

  I could not think but

  20vanished into the beauty

  of any thing I saw

  and loved,

  pod-stem, cone branch, rocking

  bay grass:

  25it was almost dark when the wind

  breathless from playing

  with water

  came over and stopped

  resting in the bare trees and dry grass

  30and weeds:

  I built a fire in a hollow stump

  and sitting by

  wove a disc of reeds,

  a round raft, and

  35sometime during the night

  the moon shone but

  it must have been the early night

  for when I set out

  standing on my disc

  40and poling with a birch

  it was black dark

  of a full tide:

  the wind slept through my leaving:

  I did not wake it to say goodbye:

  45the raft swirled before day

  and the choppy, tugging bay

  let me know

  I had caught the tide

  and was rushing through

  50the outer sea-banks

  into the open sea:

  when dawn came

  I looked

  and saw no land:

  55tide free and

  without direction I

  gave up the pole,

  my round raft

  having no bow,

  60nowhere to point:

  I knelt in the center

  to look for where the

  sun would break

  and when it started to come

  65I knew the slow whirl

  of my ship

  which turned my back to the east

  and

  brought me slowly round again:

  70at each revolution

  I had

  new glory in my eyes

  and thought with chuckles

  where would I be at noon

  75and what of the night

  when the black ocean

  might seem not there

  though of course stars

  and planets rise and

  80east can be known

  on a fair night

  but I was not

  certain

  I wanted to go east:

  85it seemed wise

  to let

  the currents be

  whatever they would be,

  allowing possibility

  90to chance

  where choice

  could not impose itself:

  I knelt turning that way

  a long time,

  95glad I had brought my great

  round hat

  for the sun got hot:

  at noon

  I could not tell

  100I turned

  for overhead the sun,

  motionless in its dome,

  spun still

  and did not wobble

  105the dome

  or turn a falling shadow

  on my raft’s periphery:

  soon though that symmetry

  eased

  110and the sun

  was falling

  and the wind came

  in an afternoon way

  rushing before dark to catch me.

  c. 1955–60 (1963)

  Hymn

  I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth

  and go on out

  over the sea marshes and the brant in bays

  and over the hills of tall hickory

  5and over the crater lakes and canyons

  and on up through the spheres of diminishing air

  past the blackset noctilucent clouds

  where one wants to stop and look

  way past all the light diffusions and bombardments

  10up farther than the loss of sight

  into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

  And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth

  inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes

  trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest

  15coelenterates

  and praying for a nerve cell

  with all the soul of my chemical reactions

  and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

  You are everywhere partial and entire

  20You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

  I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum

  has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut

  and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark

  chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down

  25and if I find you I must go out deep into your

  far resolutions

  and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves

  1956 (1957)

  Risks and Possibilities

  Here are some pretty things picked for you:

  1)dry thunder

  rustling like water

  down the sky’s eaves

  5is summer locust

  in dogfennel weed

  2)the fieldwild

  yellow daisy

  focusing dawn

  10inaugurates

  the cosmos

  3)the universe comes

  to bear

  on a willow-slip and

  15you cannot unwind

  a pebble

  from its constellations

  4)chill frog-gibber

  from grass

  20or loose stone

  is

  crucial as fieldwild

  yellow daisy:

  such propositions:

  25each thing boundless in its effect,

  eternal in the working out

  of its effect: each brush

  of beetle-bristle against a twig

  and the whole

  30shifts, compensates, realigns:

  the crawl of a slug

  on the sea’s floor


  quivers the moon to a new dimension:

  bright philosophy,

  35shake us all! here on the

  bottom of an ocean of space

  we babble words recorded

  in waves

  of sound that

  40cannot fully disappear,

  washing up

  like fossils on the shores of unknown worlds:

  nevertheless, taking our identities,

  we accept destruction:

  45a tree, committed as a tree,

  cannot in a flood

  turn fish,

  sprout gills (leaves are

  a tree’s gills) and fins:

  50the molluscs

  dug out of mountain peaks

  are all dead:

  oh I will be addled and easy and move

  over this prairie in the wind’s keep,

  55long-lying sierras blue-low in the distance:

  I will glide and say little

  (what would you have me say? I know nothing;

  still, I cannot help singing)

  and after much grace

  60I will pause

  and break cactus water to your lips:

  identity’s strict confinement! a risk

  and possibility,

  granted by mercy:

  65in your death is the mercy of your granted life:

  do not quibble:

  dry thunder in the locust weed!

  the supple willow-slip leafless in winter!

  the chill gibber of the frog

  70stilled in nightsnake’s foraging thrust!

  how ridiculous!

  grim:

  enchanting:

  repeating mid night these songs for these divisions.

  1959 (1960)

  Terrain

  The soul is a region without definite boundaries:

  it is not certain a prairie

  can exhaust it

  or a range enclose it:

  5it floats (self-adjusting) like the continental mass,

  where it towers most

  extending its deepest mantling base

  (exactly proportional):

  does not flow all one way: there is a divide:

  10river systems thrown like winter tree-shadows

  against the hills: branches, runs, high lakes:

  stagnant lily-marshes:

  is variable, has weather: floods unbalancing

  gut it, silt altering the

  15distribution of weight, the nature of content:

  whirlwinds move through it

  or stand spinning like separate orders: the moon comes:

  there are barren spots: bogs, rising

  by self-accretion from themselves, a growth into

  20destruction of growth,

  change of character,

  invasion of peat by poplar and oak: semi-precious

  stones and precious metals drop from muddy water into mud:

  it is an area of poise, really, held from tipping,

  25dark wild water, fierce eels, countercurrents:

  a habitat, precise ecology of forms

  mutually to some extent

  tolerable, not entirely self-destroying: a crust afloat:

  a scum, foam to the deep and other-natured:

  30but deeper than depth, too: a vacancy and swirl:

  it may be spherical, light and knowledge merely

  the iris and opening

  to the dark methods of its sight: how it comes and

  goes, ruptures and heals,

  35whirls and stands still: the moon comes: terrain.

  1959 (1960)

  Nelly Myers

  I think of her

  while having a bowl of wheatflakes

  (why? we never had wheatflakes

  or any cereal then

  5except breakfast grits)

  and tears come to my eyes

  and I think that I will die

  because

  the bright, clear days when she was with me

  10and when we were together

  (without caring that we were together)

  can never be restored:

  my love wide-ranging

  I mused with clucking hens

  15and brought in from summer storms

  at midnight the thrilled cold chicks

  and dried them out

  at the fireplace

  and got up before morning

  20unbundled them from the piles of rags and

  turned them into the sun:

  I cannot go back

  I cannot be with her again

  and my love included the bronze

  25sheaves of broomstraw

  she would be coming across the fields with

  before the household was more than stirring out to pee

  and there she would be coming

  as mysteriously from a new world

  30and she was already old when I was born but I love

  the thought of her hand

  wringing the tall tuft of dried grass

  and I cannot see her beat out the fuzzy bloom

  again

  35readying the straw for our brooms at home,

  I can never see again the calm sentence of her mind

  as she

  measured out brooms for the neighbors and charged

  a nickel a broom:

  40I think of her

  but cannot remember how I thought of her

  as I grew up: she was not a member of the family:

  I knew she was not my mother,

  not an aunt, there was nothing

  45visiting about her: she had her room,

  she kept her bag of money

  (on lonely Saturday afternoons

  you could sometimes hear the coins

  spilling and spilling into her apron):

  50she never went away, she was Nelly Myers, we

  called her Nel,

  small, thin, her legs wrapped from knees to ankles

  in homespun bandages: she always had the soreleg

  and sometimes

  55red would show at the knee, or the ankle would swell

  and look hot

  (and sometimes the cloths would

  dwindle,

  the bandages grow thin, the bowed legs look

  60pale and dry—I would feel good then,

  maybe for weeks

  there would seem reason of promise,

  though she rarely mentioned her legs

  and was rarely asked about them): she always went,

  65legs red or white, went, went

  through the mornings before sunrise

  covering the fields and

  woods

  looking for huckleberries

  70or quieting some wild call to move and go

  roaming the woods and acres of daybreak

  and there was always a fire in the stove

  when my mother rose (which was not late):

  my grandmother, they say, took her in

  75when she was a stripling run away from home

  (her mind was not perfect

  which is no bar to this love song

  for her smile was sweet,

  her outrage honest and violent)

  80and they say that after she worked all day her relatives

  would throw a handful of dried peas into her lap

  for her supper

  and she came to live in the house I was born in the

  northwest room of:

  85oh I will not end my grief

  that she is gone, I will not end my singing;

  my songs like blueberries

  felt-out and black to her searching fingers before light

  welcome her

  90wherever her thoughts ride with mine, now or in any time

  that may come

  when I am gone; I will not end visions of her naked feet

  in the sandpaths: I will hear her words

  “Applecandy” which meant Christmas,

  95“Lambesda
mn” which meant Goddamn (she was forthright

  and didn’t go to church

  and nobody wondered if she should

  and I agree with her the Holcomb pinegrove bordering our

  field was

  100more hushed and lovelier than cathedrals

  not to mention country churches with unpainted boards

  and so much innocence as she carried in her face

  has entered few churches in one person)

  and her exclamation “Founshy-day!” I know no meaning for

  105but knew she was using it right:

  and I will not forget how though nearly deaf

  she heard the tender blood in lips of children

  and knew the hurt

  and knew what to do:

  110and I will not forget how I saw her last, tied in a chair

  lest she rise to go

  and fall

  for how innocently indomitable

  was her lust

  115and how her legs were turgid with still blood as she sat

  and how real her tears were as I left

  to go back to college (damn all colleges):

  oh where her partial soul, as others thought,

  roams roams my love,

  120mother, not my mother, grandmother, not my grandmother,

  slave to our farm’s work, no slave I would not stoop to:

  I will not end my grief, earth will not end my grief,

  I move on, we move on, some scraps of us together,

  my broken soul leaning toward her to be touched,

  125listening to be healed.

  1961 (1963)

  Bridge

  A tea garden shows you how:

  you sit in rhododendron shade

  at table

  on a pavilion-like lawn