by A. R. Ammons
descent of the
god is
awkward,
narrowing and
50difficult; first
he is
loose in the
air,
then captured,
55held, by
holy fire: the
circle of columns
binds
him and from
60the columns
the priestess
gathers him,
seized
by her struggling
65mouth into
a speech of
forms: it is
speech
few can read,
70the god
violent to
over-reach the
definite:
why should
75he, who is
all, commit
himself to the
particular?
say himself
80into less
than all? pressed
too far, he
leaves
wounds that are
85invisible: it
is only as
she becomes
him
that the priestess
90cannot be hurt
or can be hurt:
should she
break
her human hold
95and go too far
with him,
who could bring
her
back, her eyes
100lost to the
visible? step
by step into the
actual,
truth descending
105breaks,
reaches us as
fragmentation
hardened
into words”:
110but, I said, isn’t
it convenient
the priestess is
general
and inexact, merely
115turning and wailing?
if the god fails
me, whom shall I
blame?
her? you who may
120have read her wrong?
and if all goes
well, whom shall I
thank?
the god
125with honor,
you with the
actual coin?
“Night
falls,” the reader said,
130“the priestess lies
god-torn, limp: the
freed god
flies
again blameless as
135air: go
to your fate:
if you succeed, praise the
god:
if you fail,
140discover your flaw.”
1960 (1964)
Spindle
Song is a violence
of icicles and
windy trees:
rising it catches up
5indifferent
cellophane, loose
leaves, all mobiles
into an organized whirl
relating scrap
10to scrap in a round
fury: violence
brocades
the rocks with hard silver
of sea water and
15makes the tree
show the power of its
holding on: a
violence to make
that can destroy.
1963 (1964)
The Yucca Moth
The yucca clump
is blooming,
tall sturdy spears
spangling into bells of light,
5green
in the white blooms
faint as
a memory of mint:
I raid
10a bloom,
spread the hung petals out,
and, surprised he is not
a bloom-part, find
a moth inside, the exact color,
15the bloom his daylight port or cove:
though time comes
and goes and troubles
are unlessened,
the yucca is lifting temples
20of bloom: from the night
of our dark flights, can
we go in to heal, live
out in white-green shade
the radiant, white, hanging day?
1962 (1964)
Anxiety
The sparrowhawk
flies hard to
stand in the
air: something
5about direction
lets us loose
into ease
and slow grace.
1963 (1964)
Four Motions for the Pea Vines
1.
the rhythm is
diffusion and concentration:
in and out:
expansion and
5contraction: the unfolding,
furling:
the forces
that propel the rhythm,
the lines of winding-up,
10loosening, depositing,
dissolving:
the vehicles!
light, the vehicle of itself, light
surrounding
15we are made and fed by:
water, the solvent, vehicle
of molecules and grains,
the dissolver and depositor,
the maker of films
20and residues,
the all-absorbing vessel uncontained!
the rhythm is
out and
in,
25diffusion and concentration:
the dry pea from the
ground
expands to vines and leaves,
harvests sun and water
30into
baby-white new peas:
the forms that exist
in this rhythm! the whirling
forms!
35grief and glory of
this rhythm:
the rhythm is
2.
for the expansions (and concentrations) here
is the five-acre
40Todd Field:
seeding, too, is gathering,
preparation to collect
mineral, rain, and light, and
between the corn-rows,
45the broadcast field peas
fall into soft, laying-by soil:
dry beads of concentration
covered by the moist
general ground:
50and the general moisture, the rain’s
held shadow, softens, breaks
down, swells
and frees
the hard incipience that
55generalizes outward toward extension;
the root reaching with gravity,
the stalk opposing
crazing through the black land upward to the light
3.
fat and sassy
60the raucous crows
along the wood’s edge
trouble the tops of
yellowing pines
with points of dipping black;
65cluster into groups
from summer,
the younglings in their wings
poised,
careful,
70precise,
the dazed awkwardness of heavy nest birds
hardened lean into grace;
assemble along the edge of the field and
begin winter talk,
75remembrances of summer and separations,
agree
or disagree
on a roost,
the old birds more often silent,
80calmer and more tolerant in their memory,
wiser of dangers
experienced or conceived,
less inclined to play,
irritable,
85but at times
exultant in pitched flight,
as if catching for a moment
youth’s inexperienced gladness, or as if
feelin
g
90over time and danger
a triumph greater than innocent joy:
to turn aside and live with them
would not seem
much different—
95each of us going into winter with gains and losses,
dry, light peas of concentration nearby
(for a winter’s gleaning)
to expand warmth through us
4.
slow as the pale low-arcing sun, the women move
100down windy rows of the autumn field:
the peavines are dead:
cornstalks and peapods rattle in the dry bleach
of cold:
the women glean remnant peas
105(too old to snap or shell) that
got past being green; shatter from skeletal vines
handfuls of peapods, tan, light:
bent the slow women drag towsacks huge
with peas, bulk but little
110weight: a boy carries a sack on his
shoulders to the end of the rows:
he stoops: the sack goes over his head
to the ground: he flails it with a tobacco stick,
opens the sack, removes the husks, and
115from sack to tub winnows
dry hard crackling peas: rhythms reaching through
seasons, motions weaving in and out!
1962 (1964)
Hymn II
So when the year had come full round
I rose
and went out to the naked mountain
to see
5the single peachflower on the sprout
blooming through a side of ribs
possibly a colt’s
and I endured each petal separately
and moved in orisons with the sepals
10I lay
said the sprouting stump
in the path of Liberty
Tyranny though I said is very terrible
and sat down leeward of the blossom
15to be blessed
and was startled by
a lost circling bee
The large sun setting red I went
down to the stream
20and wading in
let your cold water run over my feet
1954 (1958)
Hymn III
In the hour of extreme
importance
when clots thicken
in outlying limbs and
5warmth retreats
to mourn
the thinning garrison of pulse
keep my tongue loose
to sing possible
10changes
that might redeem
might in iron phrases
clang the skies
bells and my jangling eyes
15ringing you in
to claim me
shriven celebrant
your love’s new-reasoned singer
home
20dead on arrival
(1958)
Open
Exuberance: joy to the last
pained loss
and hunger of air:
life open, not decided on,
5though decided in death:
the mind cannot be
rid
while it works
of remembered genitals
10beautiful, dank, pliant,
of canyons, brush hills, pastures, streets,
unities and divisions,
meetings,
exact remembrance of liquid buttocks,
15navel, ellipse of hand,
magnified territories of going down
and rising,
the thin tracing saliva line,
joy’s configurations:
20serendipity: the unexpected,
the
possible, the unembodied,
unevented:
the sun will burst: death
25is certain: the future limited
nevertheless is
limitless: the white knotted
groin,
the finger describing
30entrances!
the dark, warm with glowing awareness, the
hot dis-
missals of desire
until the last last tear of pain:
35until the end nothing ends, lust
forward, rushing;
pillars of ice wet-bright in melt,
warm
with always-yielding joy: yes
40yes
yes, the loose mouths hiss in the mornings of death.
1960 (1963)
Epiphany
Like a single drop of rain,
the wasp strikes
the windowpane; buzzes rapidly
away, disguising
5error in urgent business:
such is the
invisible, hard as glass,
unrenderable by the senses,
not known until stricken by:
10some talk that
there is safety in the visible,
the definite, the heard and felt,
pre-stressing the rational and
calling out with
15joy, like people far from death:
how puzzled they will be when
going headlong secure in “things”
they strike the
intangible and break, lost,
20unaccustomed to transparency, to
being without body, energy
without image:
how they will be dealt
hard realizations, opaque as death.
1959 (1960)
Prodigal
After the shifts and dis-
continuities, after the congregations of orders,
black masses floating through
mind’s boreal clarity, icebergs in fog,
5flotillas of wintering ducks weathering the night,
chains of orders, multifilamentous chains
knobbed with possibility, disoriented
chains, winding back on themselves, unwinding,
intervolving, spinning, breaking off
10(nomads clustering at dusk into tents of sleep,
disorganizing, widening out again with morning)
after the mental
blaze and gleam,
the mind in both motions building and tearing down,
15running to link effective chains,
establish molecules of meaning,
frameworks, to
perfect modes of structuring
(so days can bend to trellising
20and pruned take shape,
bloom into necessary event)
after these motions, these vectors,
orders moving in and out of orders, collisions
of orders, dispersions, the grasp weakens,
25the mind whirls, short of the unifying
reach, short of the heat
to carry that forging:
after the visions of these losses, the spent
seer, delivered to wastage, risen
30into ribs, consigns knowledge to
approximation, order to the vehicle
of change, and fumbles blind in blunt innocence
toward divine, terrible love.
1959 (1964)
Motion
The word is
not the thing:
is
a construction of,
5a tag for,
the thing: the
word in
no way
resembles
10the thing, except
as sound
resembles,
as in whirr,
sound:
15the relation
between what this
as words
is
and what is
20is tenuous: we
agree upon
this as the net to
cast on what
is: the finger
25to
point with: the
/> method of
distinguishing,
defining, limiting:
30poems
are fingers, methods,
nets,
not what is or
was:
35but the music
in poems
is different,
points to nothing,
traps no
40realities, takes
no game, but
by the motion of
its motion
resembles
45what, moving, is—
the wind
underleaf white against
the tree.
1962 (1964)
The Misfit
The unassimilable fact leads us on:
round the edges
where broken shapes make poor masonry
the synthesis
5fails (and succeeds) into limitation
or extending itself too far
becomes a different synthesis:
law applies
consistently to the molecule,
10not to the ocean, unoriented, unprocessed,
it floats in, that floats in it:
we are led on