The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1
Page 10
loose in the medium:
remove the water,
letting down dams: in pike pools,
maybe looking for bait, dip
40the water out,
concentrate the residue, increase
the incidence (you can
catch fry
with your hands then, clutching
45the silver lights against the mud:)
if you can’t remove
the water, change it, as
by muddying: swamp
ponds yield their fruit to this:
50churn up the bottom,
suffocate the brim,
bluegills, “flowers,” so they
rise to breathe:
seining
55then is good: it
ridding lets the water through,
thickens the impermeables:
(you round-up a tiger,
isolate a compound, the same way:
60surrounding, eliminating the habitat and
closing in
on a center or pass
or tiger-run along a river:)
IV.
the men rise from sand and sleep,
65wheel the boat,
strung like a turtle
under a giant cart,
to the sea’s edge:
dropped free,
70the oared boat
leaps, nosing into the surf,
and spilling
the net astern,
semicircles back
75to land:
hauled in, the net is
a windrow of fish,
gathered into thin, starving air,
the ocean, sucking, returned whole
80to itself, separation complete,
fish from sea, tiger
from jungle, vision from experience.
1959 (1962)
River
I shall
go down
to the deep river, to the moonwaters,
where the silver
5willows are and the bay blossoms,
to the songs
of dark birds,
to the great wooded silence
of flowing
10forever down the dark river
silvered at the moon-singing of hidden birds:
27 March
the forsythia is out,
sprawling like
15yellow amoebae, the long
uneven branches—pseudo-
podia—
angling on the bottom
of air’s spring-clear pool:
20shall I
go down
to the deep river, to the moonwaters,
where the silver
willows are and the bay blossoms,
25to the songs
of dark birds,
to the great wooded silence
of flowing
forever down the dark river
30silvered at the moon-singing of hidden birds.
c. 1955–1960 (1960)
Motion for Motion
Watched on the sandy, stony bottom of the stream
the oval black shadow of the waterbeetle, shadow
larger than beetle, though no blacker, mirroring
at a down and off angle motion for motion, whirl, run:
5(if I knew the diameters
of oval and beetle, the
depth of the stream, several
indices of refraction
and so forth
10I might say why
the shadow outsizes the
beetle—
I admit to mystery
in the obvious—
15but now that I remember some
I think the shadow
included the bent water where
the beetle rode, surface
tension, not breaking, bending
20under to hold him up,
the deformation recorded in shade:
for light, arising from so far away,
is parallel
through a foot of water
25(though edge-light
would
make a difference—a beetle can
exist among such differences
and do well):
30someone has a clear vision of it all,
exact to complete existence;
loves me when I swear and praise
and smiles, probably, to see me
wrestle with sight
35and gain no reason from it, or money,
but a blurred mind overexposed):
caught the sudden gust of a catbird, selfshot
under the bridge and out into my sight: he splashed
into the air near a briervine, lit:
40I don’t know by what will: it was clear sailing
on down the stream
and prettier—a moss-bright island made two streams
and then made one and, farther, two fine birches
and a lot of things to see: but he stopped
45back to me,
didn’t see me, hopped on through the vines, by some
will not including me . . .
and then there were two beetles, and later three at
once swimming in the sun, and three shadows,
50all reproduced, multiplied without effort
or sound, the unique beetle—and I—lost to an
automatic machinery in things, duplicating, without
useful difference, some changeless order extending
backward beyond the origin of earth,
55changeless and true, even before the water fell, or
the sun broke, or the beetle turned, or the still
human head bent from a bridge-rail above to have a look.
1961 (1963)
Identity
1)An individual spider web
identifies a species:
an order of instinct prevails
through all accidents of circumstance,
5though possibility is
high along the peripheries of
spider
webs:
you can go all
10around the fringing attachments
and find
disorder ripe,
entropy rich, high levels of random,
numerous occasions of accident:
152)the possible settings
of a web are infinite:
how does
the spider keep
identity
20while creating the web
in a particular place?
how and to what extent
and by what modes of chemistry
and control?
25it is
wonderful
how things work: I will tell you
about it
because
30it is interesting
and because whatever is
moves in weeds
and stars and spider webs
and known
35is loved:
in that love,
each of us knowing it,
I love you,
for it moves within and beyond us,
40sizzles in
winter grasses, darts and hangs with bumblebees
by summer windowsills:
I will show you
the underlying that takes no image to itself,
45cannot be shown or said,
but weaves in and out of moons and bladderweeds,
is all and
beyond destruction
because created fully in no
50particular form:
if the web were perfectly pre-set,
the spider could
never find
a perfect place to set it in: and
55if the web were
perfectly adaptable,
if freedom and possibility were without limit,
the web would
lose its special identity:
60the row-strung garden web
keeps order at th
e center
where space is freest (interesting that the freest
“medium” should
accept the firmest order)
65and that
order
diminishes toward the
periphery
allowing at the points of contact
70entropy equal to entropy.
1961 (1963)
What This Mode of Motion Said
You will someday
try to prove me wrong
(I am the wings when you me fly)
to replace me with some mode
5you made
and think is right:
I am the way by
which you prove me
wrong,
10the reason you
reason against me:
I change shape,
turn easily into the shapes you make
and even you
15in moving
I leave, betray:
what has not yet been imagined has been
imagined by me
whom you honor, reach for—
20change unending though
slowed into nearly limited modes:
question me and I
will give you an answer
narrow and definite
25as the question
that devours you (the exact
is a conquest of time that time vanquishes)
or vague as wonder
by which I elude you:
30pressed
for certainty
I harden to a stone,
lie unimaginable in meaning
at your feet,
35leave you less
certainty than you brought, leave
you to create the stone
as any image of yourself,
shape of your dreams:
40pressed too far
I wound, returning endless
inquiry
for the pride of inquiry:
shapeless, unspendable,
45powerless in the actual
which I rule, I
will not
make deposits in your bank account
or free you from bosses
50in little factories,
will not spare you insult, will not
protect you from
men who
have never heard of modes, who
55do not respect me
or your knowledge of me in you;
men I let win,
their thin tight lips
humiliating my worshippers:
60I betray
him who gets me in his eyes and sees
beyond the fact
to the motions of my permanence.
1961
Still
I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I’ll wake up
5and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
10I could
freely adopt as my own:
but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
15everything is
magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:
20I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
25nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up
30and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
35there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:
40I whirled through transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:
at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
45with being!
1962 (1963)
The Golden Mean
What does
wisdom say:
wisdom says
do not put too much stress
5on doing; sit some and wait,
if you can get
that self-contained:
but do not sit too much;
being can wear thin
10without experience:
not too much stress on thrift
at the expense of living;
immaterial things like
life must be conserved against
15materiality: however,
spending every dime you make
can exhaust all boundaries,
destroy resources and
recovery’s means:
20not too much stress on knowledge;
understanding, too, is a
high faculty
that should bear pleasurably on facts;
ordering, aligning,
25comparing,
as processes, become diffuse in too
much massiveness:
but the acquisition
of thinking stuff is crucial
30to knowledge
and to understanding:
wisdom says
do not love exceedingly:
you must withhold
35enough to weather loss;
however, love thoroughly
and with the body
so women will respect and fear the little
man: though dainty
40they will scoff
when not profoundly had: not too much
mind over body or
body over mind;
they are united in this life and should
45blend to dual good or ill:
and do not stress
wisdom too much: if you lean neither
way, the golden
mean narrows
50and rather than a way becomes a wire,
or altogether
vanishes, a
hypothetical line from which extremes
perpendicularly begin:
55and if you do not
violate wisdom to some extent,
committing yourself fully,
without reserve,
and foolishly, you will not become one,
60capable of direction,
selected to a single aim,
and you will be notable for nothing:
nothing in excess is
excessive nothingness:
65go: but wisdom says do not go too far.
1959 (1960)
Nucleus
How you buy a factory:
got wind of one for sale in
Montreal,
Hochelaga
5where Cartier, amicably received,
gave the squaws and children
tin bells and tin paternosters
and the men knives
and went up to the nearby
10height and
called it Mt. Royal
from which the view was
panoramic,
an island 17 × 40
15miles,
good trees (good as France)
and, below, thick maize:
Montreal,
got “The Laurentian” out of New York
20f
irst morning after the strike ended
and rode up parlor-car (expense account)
along the solid-white Hudson
and on up into hilled
graybirch country, through the Adirondacks
25and along the high west bank of Lake Champlain
(on heavy ice
men in windhuts fishing)
and read Bottom
and “gives to airy nothing
30A local habitation and a name”:
met the vice president
in the lobby at 8 next morning, ascended
(étage de confrères, troisième étage, s’il vous plaît,
third floor, please)
35to the 22nd floor
to “The Panorama”
for breakfast: sight to see: St. Lawrence over there,
Windsor Hotel remodeling, where the Queen stayed,
cathedral, replica (but smaller)
40of St. Peter’s:
Montreal,
and left center city by cab,
through the French Quarter, out near Westmont,
long stairs from street to second floor,
45said it was typical,
with metal viny rails,
and on through streets, bilingual
traffic signs, turn left, left again: there:
Linden Sreet: 807, a local habitation and a name,
50four walls, a limited, defined, exact place,
a nucleus,