by A. R. Ammons
giving up her heavy grief, lying
down beside him, their secret union
40invisible in the green needles of
the great pine that branches now
into their rest, looking where Levi
Scott, four years old in 1800, went
down beneath his thin tall slab, may
45the child keep innocent of treason, and
on to Crowley Landing on the left
between river and road, now a campsite
and picnic ground, where we took
pictures, wild mullein starring the
50grounds, a yucca group with dead
flower-spears off in a clearing, in
the center a mound of old chimney
bricks with wasp dust and gold grasses
and a yard tree, broken off, with
55slender sprouts nude, swamp cedar
standing around in clumps like persons
edging the openings, by the river now
narrower twists of white birch
thin-twigged and leafless, and
60around two curves to Batsto, the
tower of the mansion house first seen,
like the towers of shore women gazing
the sea’s return, a confluence of
roads and streams, the bog-iron works
65and Revolutionary cannon balls, iron
hearths and iron oxen-shoes, seeing
a nail made and headed from nail rod,
the company store, and men from
Trenton writing the place up for the
70Sunday paper, wasps drunk with fall
warmth, a beautiful November noon by
the grist mill and the meal-honed
wood, the carriage house and small
seats, the sty with the iron-bowled
75furnace for scalding, on the third
floor of the mansion a strict stairway
to the slaves’ underground railroad,
and
weakening to the presence of a foreign
80past and to the keeping of old things,
back home by Route 30 and the White
Horse Pike, by the farmers’ stands,
Naval Air Base and to the sea’s edge.
1957 (1961)
Mansion
So it came time
for me to cede myself
and I chose
the wind
5to be delivered to
The wind was glad
and said it needed all
the body
it could get
10to show its motions with
and wanted to know
willingly as I hoped it would
if it could do
something in return
15to show its gratitude
When the tree of my bones
rises from the skin I said
come and whirlwinding
stroll my dust
20around the plain
so I can see
how the ocotillo does
and how saguaro-wren is
and when you fall
25with evening
fall with me here
where we can watch
the closing up of day
and think how morning breaks
1959 (1960)
Close-Up
Are all these stones
yours
I said
and the mountain
5pleased
but reluctant to
admit my praise could move it much
shook a little
and rained a windrow ring of stones
10to show
that it was so
Stonefelled I got
up addled with dust
and shook
15myself
without much consequence
Obviously I said it doesn’t pay
to get too
close up to
20greatness
and the mountain friendless wept
and said
it couldn’t help
itself
1958 (1959)
Mountain Liar
The mountains said they were
tired of lying down
and wanted to know what
I could do about
5getting them off the ground
Well close your eyes I said
and I’ll see if I can
by seeing into your nature
tell where you’ve been wronged
10What do you think you want to do
They said Oh fly
My hands are old
and crippled keep no lyre
but if that is your true desire
15and conforms roughly
with your nature I said
I don’t see why
we shouldn’t try
to see something along that line
20Hurry they said and snapped shut
with rocky sounds their eyes
I closed mine and sure enough
the whole range flew
gliding on interstellar ice
25They shrieked with joy and peeked
as if to see below
but saw me as before there
foolish without my lyre
We haven’t budged they said
30You wood
(1958)
Prospecting
Coming to cottonwoods, an
orange rockshelf,
and in the gully
an edging of stream willows,
5I made camp
and turned my mule loose
to graze in the dark
evening of the mountain.
Drowsed over the coals
10and my loneliness
like an inner image went
out and shook
hands with the willows,
and running up the black scarp
15tugged the heavy moon
up and over into light,
and on a hill-thorn of sage
called with the coyotes
and told ghost stories to
20a night circle of lizards.
Tipping on its handle
the Dipper unobtrusively
poured out the night.
At dawn returning, wet
25to the hips with meetings,
my loneliness woke me up
and we merged refreshed into
the breaking of camp and day.
1958 (1960)
Jersey Cedars
The wind inclines the cedars and lets
snow riding in
bow them
swaying weepers
5on the hedgerows of
open fields
black-green branches stubby fans under snow
bent spires dipping at the ground
Oh said the cedars will spring let us rise
10and I said rain
will thawing
unburden you
and will
they said
15we stand again green-cone arrows at the sun
The forces I said are already set up
but they splintering in that deep soft day
could not herd
their moans
20into my quiet speech
and I bent
over arms
dangling loose to wind and snow to be
with them assailing the earth with moans
1958 (1960)
Hardweed Path Going
Every evening, down into the hardweed
going,
the slop bucket heavy, held-out, wire handle
freezing in the hand, put it down a minute, the jerky
5smooth unspilling levelness of the knees,
meditation of a bucket rim,
lest the wheat meal,
floating on clear greasewater, spill,
down the grown-up path:
10don’t forget to slop the hogs,
feed the chickens,
water the mule,
cut the kindling,
build the fire,
15call up the cow:
supper is over, it’s starting to get
dark early,
better get the scraps together, mix a little meal in,
nothing but swill.
20The dead-purple woods hover on the west.
I know those woods.
Under the tall, ceiling-solid pines, beyond the edge of
field and brush, where the wild myrtle grows,
I let my jo-reet loose.
25A jo-reet is a bird. Nine weeks of summer he
sat on the well bench in a screened box,
a stick inside to walk on,
“jo-reet,” he said, “jo-reet.”
and I
30would come up to the well and draw the bucket down
deep into the cold place where red and white marbled
clay oozed the purest water, water celebrated
throughout the county:
“Grits all gone?”
35“jo-reet.”
Throw a dipper of cold water on him. Reddish-black
flutter.
“reet, reet, reet!”
Better turn him loose before
40cold weather comes on.
Doom caving in
inside
any pleasure, pure
attachment
45of love.
Beyond the wild myrtle away from cats I turned him loose
and his eye asked me what to do, where to go;
he hopped around, scratched a little, but looked up at me.
Don’t look at me. Winter is coming.
50Disappear in the bushes. I’m tired of you and will
be alone hereafter. I will go dry in my well.
I will turn still.
Go south. Grits is not available in any natural form.
Look under leaves, try mushy logs, the floors of pinywoods.
55South into the dominion of bugs.
They’re good woods.
But lay me out if a mourning dove far off in the dusky pines
starts.
Down the hardweed path going,
60leaning, balancing, away from the bucket, to
Sparkle, my favorite hog, sparse, fine black hair,
grunted while feeding if rubbed,
scratched against the hair, or if talked to gently:
got the bottom of the slop bucket:
65“Sparkle . . .
You hungry?
Hungry, girly?”
blowing, bubbling in the trough.
Waiting for the first freeze:
70“Think it’s going to freeze tonight?” say the neighbors,
the neighbors, going by.
Hog-killing.
Oh, Sparkle, when the axe tomorrow morning falls
and the rush is made to open your throat,
75I will sing, watching dry-eyed as a man, sing my
love for you in the tender feedings.
She’s nothing but a hog, boy.
Bleed out, Sparkle, the moon-chilled bleaches
of your body hanging upside-down
80hardening through the mind and night of the first freeze.
1958 (1960)
Bourn
When I got past relevance
the singing shores
told me to turn back
but I took the outward gray
5to be
some meaning of foreign light
trying to get through and
when I looked back I saw
the shores were dancing
10willows of grief and
from willows it was not far to
look back on waves
So I came to
the decimal of being,
15entered and was gone
What light there
no tongue turns to tell
to willow and calling shore
though willows weep and shores sing always
1958 (1960)
Grassy Sound
It occurred to me there are no
sharp corners
in the wind
and I was very glad to think
5I had so close
a neighbor
to my thoughts but decided to
sleep before
inquiring
10The next morning I got up early
and after yesterday had come
clear again went
down to the salt marshes
to talk with
15the straight wind there
I have observed I said
your formlessness
and am
enchanted to know how
20you manage loose to be
so influential
The wind came as grassy sound
and between its
grassy teeth
25spoke words said with grass
and read itself
on tidal creeks as on
the screens of oscilloscopes
A heron opposing
30it rose wing to wind
turned and glided to another creek
so I named a body of water
Grassy Sound
and came home dissatisfied there
35had been no
direct reply
but rubbed with my soul an
apple to eat
till it shone
1958 (1959)
Silver
I thought Silver must have snaked logs
when young:
she couldn’t stand to have the line brush her lower hind leg:
in blinded halter she couldn’t tell what had loosened behind her
5and was coming
as downhill
to rush into her crippling her to the ground:
and when she almost went to sleep, me dreaming at the slow plow,
I would
10at dream’s end turning over the mind to a new chapter
let the line drop and touch her leg
and she would
bring the plow out of the ground with speed but wisely
fall soon again into the slow requirements of our dreams:
15how we turned at the ends of rows without sense to new furrows
and went back
flicked by
cornblades and hearing the circling in
the cornblades of horseflies in pursuit:
20I hitch up early, the raw spot on Silver’s shoulder
sore to the collar,
get a wrench and change the plow’s bull-tongue for a sweep,
and go out, wrench in my hip pocket for later adjustments,
down the ditch-path
25by the white-bloomed briars, wet crabgrass, cattails,
and rusting ferns,
riding the plow handles down,
keeping the sweep’s point from the ground,
the smooth bar under the plow gliding,
30the traces loose, the raw spot wearing its soreness out
in the gentle movement to the fields:
when snake-bitten in the spring pasture grass
Silver came up to the gate and stood head-down enchanted
in her fate
35I found her sorrowful eyes by accident and knew:
nevertheless the doctor could not keep her from all
the consequences, rolls in the sand, the blank extension
of limbs,
head thrown back in the dust,
40useless unfocusing eyes, belly swollen
wide as I was tall
and I went out in the night and saw her in the solitude
of her wildness:
but she lived and one day half got up
45and looking round at the sober world took me back
into her eyes
and then got up and walked and plowed again;
mornings her swollen snake-bitten leg wept bright as dew
and dried to streaks o
f salt leaked white from the hair.
1958 (1960)
Concentrations
I.
By the ocean
dawn is
more itself,
nets hung like
5mist on
pole-racks or
spread out for mending, weed-picking, corking—
landreefs of gray
waves
10between the poles:
and the gray
boats, turtle-nosed,
beached, out
of element, waiting,
15salt-bleached,
keels, hauled
across the sand,
ground to
wood-ghosts,
20sand-ghost gray:
and if there
is fog,
dawn, becoming itself as reeds, dunes, sheds,
transfuses it,
25opening
dune-rose-wise
petal by petal—wave, net, boat, oar, thole:
II.
under the reedthatched or pineboughed sheds
dawn men,
30opening gray eyes to gray light,
yawn out of the silver nets of dreams
and harden as entities,
their minds hardening the entities they seek:
III.
how you catch a fish, slime-quick
35with dart and turn,