by A. R. Ammons
to the boundaries
where relations loosen into chaos
15or where the nucleus fails to control,
fragments in odd shapes
expressing more and more the interstitial sea:
we are led on
to peripheries, to the raw blocks of material,
20where mortar and trowel can convert
diversity into enlarging unity:
not the million oriented facts
but the one or two facts,
out of place,
25recalcitrant, the one observed fact
that tears us into questioning:
what has not
joined dies into order to redeem, with
loss of singleness extends the form,
30or, unassimilable, leads us on.
1961
The Watch
When the sun went down and the night came on
coming over the fields and up the driveway
to the rose arbor and the backporch posts
I gathered myself together from dispersing dark
5and went up into the mountains
and sitting down on the round rock beyond the trees
kindled my thoughts
blowing the coals of my day’s bright conscious
and said
10all across the plains my voice going silently and down
among the stumps where the swamp cuts through
and in between among the villages of hill country
Now close your eyes
Sleep
15Shut out the world from the dark sweet freshening
of your quiet hearts
Lie loose in the deep waters
Do not be afraid to
give yourselves up to drowning in undefended rest
20If a dust storm blows up out of the West I will run
down the mountain and go through all the homes
and wake you up
If a new fire appears in the sky I will let you know
in time
25so you can know it should it claim you
I will have all your beings in mind burning like a watchfire
and when the night has grown thin and weak
and the full coyotes have given up their calls
I will move up close to the eternal and
30saying nine praises
commend you to it and to the coming sun
1956 (1957)
Libation
I have been throughout the world sleuthing,
drawing back goatheads
and from the writhing throats bloodletting,
watching the harassed religious eyes
5whirl and freeze.
Earth drinks
the blood of fawns: jasmines
bloom in lions’ eyes.
Breath and heat I have returned O Earth to your freedoms.
10Now keep me virile and long at love:
let submission kiss off
the asking words from my lips.
1951 (1964)
The Wide Land
Having split up the chaparral
blasting my sight
the wind said
You know I’m
5the result of
forces beyond my control
I don’t hold it against you
I said
It’s all right I understand
10Those pressure bowls and cones
the wind said
are giants in their continental gaits
I know I said I know
they’re blind giants
15Actually the wind said I’m
if anything beneficial
resolving extremes
filling up lows with highs
No I said you don’t have
20to explain
It’s just the way things are
Blind in the wide land I
turned and risked my feet
to loose stones and sudden
25alterations of height
1957 (1958)
Thaw
Winter over, ice-bound
mind better not
rush to a spring-meet fast;
might trip, stiff thoughts,
5shatter:
better not warm up too
close to sun;
might melt, run, gullies
caking off the good
10firm country of the brain.
Better go slow,
bend with the gradual movement,
let sap flow but
keep an eye on any
15thermal swell rising at
glassy mind.
If it gets loose wind
will take it
riddling through the underbrush,
20but if it stays
solid brilliant ice
tulip root
warm in coming
will splinter it.
1958 (1959)
Whose Timeless Reach
I Ezra the dying
portage of these deathless thoughts
stood on a hill in
the presence of the mountain
5and said wisdom is
too wise for man it
is for gods and gods have little
use for it so I do not know what
to do with it
10and animals use it only when
their teeth start to fall and it
is too late to do anything
else but be wise and stay
out of the way
15The eternal will not lie
down on any temporal hill
The frozen mountain rose and broke
its tireless lecture of repose
and said death does
20not take away it
ends giving halts bounty and
Bounty I said thinking of ships
that I might take and helm right
out through space
25dwarfing these safe harbors and
their values
taking the Way in whose timeless reach
cool thought unpunishable
by bones eternally glides
1955 (1956)
Ritual for Eating the World
At a bend in the rocks there hung
inexplicably a rope
and musing I said
When I die don’t bury me
5under no weeping willer tree
It’s I thought a hangman’s loop
provided by my warmer ghoul to
raise me out of care
or god’s own private fishing hook
10for glaring people
who sit wasted in the sun
on rocks
But put me up in a high dry place
unavailable to the coyote’s face
15It’s what I said old mountain
climbers left
dangling
The wind rides blade on mesa tops
Oh when I die don’t bury me
20under no weeping willer tree
and there being besides old bush
and distance nothing but a rope
I engaged myself with it but
it broke
25and all through the heaving night
making day I faced
piecemeal the sordid
reacceptance of my world
1957 (1958)
Driving Through
In the desert midnight I said
taking out my notebook I
am astonished
though widely traveled having
5seen Empire State and Palestine, Texas
and San Miguel de Allende
to mention extremes
and sharpened my pencil on the sole
of my shoe
10The mountains running skidded
over the icy mirages of the moon
and fell down tumbling
laughing for breath
on the cool dunes
15The stone mosaics of the flattest
place
s (parting lake-gifts) grouped
in colors and
played games at imagery: a green
tiger with orange eyes, an Orpheus
20with moving fingers
Fontal the shrubs flooded
everything with cool
water
I sat down against a brimming smoketree
25to watch and morning found the
desert reserved
trembling at its hot and rainless task
Driving through
you would never suspect
30the midnight rite or seeing my lonely house
guess it will someday hold
laurel and a friend
1955 (1956)
March Song
At a bend in the stream by willows
I paused to be with the cattails
their long flat leaves
and tall stems
5bleached by wind and winter light
and winter had kept them
edged down into the quiet eddy of the bend
tight with ice
O willows I said how you return
10gold to the nakedness of your limbs
coming again out of that country
into the longer sun
and Oh I said turning to the fluffy cattails
loosened to the approaching winds of spring
15what a winter you leave in the pale stems
of your becoming
1957 (1959)
Gravelly Run
I don’t know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
of stones and trees,
5of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:
for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone,
10as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:
the swamp’s slow water comes
down Gravelly Run fanning the long
stone-held algal
15hair and narrowing roils between
the shoulders of the highway bridge:
holly grows on the banks in the woods there,
and the cedars’ gothic-clustered
spires could make
20green religion in winter bones:
so I look and reflect, but the air’s glass
jail seals each thing in its entity:
no use to make any philosophies here:
I see no
25god in the holly, hear no song from
the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter
yellow in the pines: the sunlight has never
heard of trees: surrendered self among
unwelcoming forms: stranger,
30hoist your burdens, get on down the road.
1958 (1960)
TAPE FOR THE TURN OF THE YEAR (1965)
for Josephine Jacobsen and Elliott Coleman
6 DEC:
today I
decided to write
a long
thin
5poem
employing certain
classical considerations:
this
part is called the pro-
10logue: it has to do with
the business of
getting started:
first the
Muse
15must be acknowledged,
saluted, and implored:
I cannot
write
without her help
20but when
her help comes it’s
water from spring heights,
warmth and melting,
stream
25inexhaustible:
I salute her, lady
of a hundred names—
Inspiration
Unconscious
30Apollo (on her man side)
Parnassus (as her
haunt)
Pierian spring (as
the nature of her
35going)
Hippocrene
Pegasus:
most of all she’s a
woman, maybe
40a woman in us, who sets
fire to us, gives us no
rest
till her
will’s done:
45because I’ve decided, the
Muse willing,
to do this foolish
long
thin
50poem, I
specially beg
assistance:
help me!
a fool who
55plays with fool things
so fools and play
can rise in the regard of
the people,
provide serious rest
60and sweet engagement
to willing minds:
and the Muse be manifest:
I’m attracted to paper,
visualize
65kitchen napkins
scribbled
with little masterpieces:
so
it was natural for
70me (in the House &
Garden store one
night a couple weeks
ago) to contemplate
this roll of
75adding-machine tape, so
narrow, long,
unbroken, and to penetrate
into some
fool use for it: I
80thought of the poem
then,
but not seriously: now,
two weeks
have gone by, and
85the Muse hasn’t
rejected it,
seems caught up in the
serious novelty:
I get weak in
90the knees
(feel light in the head)
when I look down
and see
how much footage is
95tightly wound in that
roll: once started,
can I ever get
free
of the thing, get it in
100and out of typewriter
and mind? one
rolled end, one
dangling, coiling end?
will the Muse fill it
105up immediately and let me
loose? can my back
muscles last? my mind,
can it be
as long as
110a tape
and unwind with it?
the Muse takes care of
that: I do what I
can:
115may this song be plain as
day, exact and bright!
no moonlight to loosen
shrubs into
shapes that
120never were: no dark
nights to dissolve
woods into one black
depthless dimension:
may this song leave
125darkness alone, deal
with what
light can win into clarity:
clarity & simplicity!
no muffled talk, fragments
130of phrases, linked
without logical links,
strung
together in obscurities
supposed to reflect
135density: it’s
a wall
to obscure emptiness, the
talk of a posing man who
must talk
140but who has nothing to
say: let this song
make
complex things salient,
saliences clear, so
145there can be some
understanding:
7 DEC:
today
I feel a bit different:
my prolog sounds phony &
150posed:
maybe
I betrayed
depth
by oversimplificat
ion,
155a smugness,
unjustified sense of
security:
last
night I
160read
about the
geologic times
of the Northwest, the
periodic eruptions into
165lava plateaus,
forest grown, stabilized,
and drowned
between eruptions:
in the
170last
10,000 years (a bit of
time) the
glaciers have been
melting, some now unfed,
175disconnected, lying dead
and dissolving in
high
valleys: how strange
we are here,
180raw, new, how ephemeral our
lives and cultures,
how unrelated
to the honing out of
caves and canyons:
185the lands, floating, rise
and fall, unnoticed in the
rapid
turning over
of generations:
190we, rapids in a valley
that millennially sinks:
nothing’s simple, but
should we add
verbal complexity?
195is there a darkness
dark words should
imitate?
I mean to stay on the
crusty
200hard-clear surface: tho
congealed
it reflects the deep,
the fluid, hot motions
and intermotions where,
205after all, we
do not live:
10,000 yrs
Troy