The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1
Page 27
6825peripheries of cells:
look!
there’s the red
ink!
rising from the
6830floor:
Muse, I’ve done the best
I could:
sometimes you ran out
on me
6835& sometimes I ran out
on you:
I know you better now:
you’ve come closer:
will you
6840confer the high
grace of your touch?
come & live enduring with
me:
I’ll be faithful:
6845I won’t trick you:
I’ll give you all
I’ve got:
bestow tendance &
concern:
6850help me to surrender
myself:
I’ll be the
fingers & keys
of your song:
6855I’ll ask nothing
but the sound
of yr voice:
reader, we’ve been thru
a lot together:
6860who are you?
where will you go
now?
coughed a lot last night:
6865round
4:20 a.m. got up &
took a shot of
brandy:
numbed the tickle
6870some:
slept better:
just had lunch:
cold baked ham:
coffee: chocolate fudge
6875cookie:
last night had duck
(Bobby’s favorite) at
Mary’s: conversation:
hearing people
6880talk, how marvelous:
I’m alone too much: get
to think
other people
aren’t people:
6885the 200-inch glass
shows a
billion-billion galaxies:
what is God
to this grain of sand:
6890dispersions:
it’s as brave to accept
boundaries,
turn to the center given,
& do the best you can:
6895think of other
people: devise some
way of living
together:
get some fun out of life:
6900how about the one who sez:
it’s too late
for me to start: I
haven’t got anywhere:
I can’t get anywhere:
6905how do the hopeless
get some fun out of
life?
apes get
something out of life:
6910they don’t ask what is:
bamboo shoots,
tender, cool:
they have a head man:
they pair off
6915& raise babies:
they defend:
they sometimes rest in
clearings
and groom themselves
6920in sunlight:
have our minds taken us too
far, out of nature, out of
complete acceptance?
we haven’t remembered our
6925bodies:
let’s touch, patiently,
thoroughly: beyond
vanity:
but for all our trouble
6930with the mind,
look what it’s done:
a fact at a time:
a little here (there’s
the red ink
6935turned into the light!)
a little there:
let’s be patient: much
remains
to be known: there may
6940come
re-evaluation:
if we don’t have
the truth, we’ve
shed
6945thousands of errors:
haven’t seen the
jay:
a sparrowhawk
can stand still
6950in a high wind, too:
coming home:
how does one come
home:
self-acceptance:
6955reconciliation,
a way of
going along with this
world as it is:
nothing ideal: not as
6960you’d have it:
testing, feeling the way:
ready to
readjust, to make
amends:
6965self, not as you would
have it:
nevertheless, take
it:
do the best you
6970can with it:
I wrote about these
days
the way life gave them:
I didn’t know
6975beforehand what I
wd write,
whether I’d meet
anything new: I
showed that I’m sometimes
6980blank & abstract,
sometimes blessed with
song: sometimes
silly, vapid, serious,
angry, despairing:
6985ideally, I’d
be like a short poem:
that’s a fine way
to be: a poem at a
time: but all day
6990life itself is bending,
weaving, changing,
adapting, failing,
succeeding:
I’ve given
6995you my
emptiness: it may
not be unlike
your emptiness:
in voyages, there
7000are wide reaches
of water
with no islands:
I’ve given you the
interstices: the
7005space between
electrons:
I’ve given you
the dull days
when turning & turning
7010revealed nothing:
I’ve given you the
sky,
uninterrupted by moon,
bird, or cloud:
7015I’ve given
you long
uninteresting walks
so you could experience
vacancy:
7020old castles, carnivals,
ditchbanks,
bridges, ponds,
steel mills,
cities: so many
7025interesting tours:
the roll has lifted
from the floor &
our journey is done:
thank you
7030for coming: thank
you for coming along:
the sun’s bright:
the wind rocks the
naked trees:
7035so long:
1963–1964
NORTHFIELD POEMS (1966)
to Blanche and W. M. Ammons
Kind
I can’t understand it
said the giant redwood
I have attained height and distant view,
am easy with time,
5and yet you search the
wood’s edge
for weeds
that find half-dark room in margins
of stone
10and are
as everybody knows
here and gone in a season
O redwood I said in this matter
I may not be able to argue from reason
15but preference sends me stooping
seeking
the least,
as finished as you
and with a flower
1964 (1964)
Height
There was a hill once wanted
to become a mountain
and
forces underground helped it
5lift itself
into broad view
and noticeable height:
but the green hills around and even
som
e passable mountains,
10diminished by white,
wanted it down
so the mountain, alone, found
grandeur taxing and
turned and turned
15to try to be concealed:
oh but after the rock is
massive and high . . . !
how many centuries of rain and
ice, avalanche
20and shedding shale
before the dull mound
can yield to grass!
1964 (1964)
Joshua Tree
The wind
rounding the gap
found me there
weeping under a
5Joshua tree
and Oh I said
I am mortal all right
and cannot live,
by roads
10stopping to wait
for no one coming,
moving on
to dust
and burned weeds,
15having no liturgy,
no pilgrim
from my throat
singing wet news of joy,
no dome, alabaster wall,
20no eternal city:
the wind said
Wayfaring and wandering
is not for mortals
who should raise
25the cock
that cries their
dawns in and
cannot always be coming to un-
broken country:
30settle here
by this Joshua tree
and make a well:
unlike wind
that dies and
35never dies I said
I must go on
consigned to
form that will not
let me loose
40except to death
till some
syllable’s rain
anoints my tongue
and makes it sing
45to strangers:
if it does not rain
find me wasted by roads:
enter angling through
my cage
50and let my ribs
sing me out.
1958 (1959)
Reflective
I found a
weed
that had a
mirror in it
5and that
mirror
looked in at
a mirror
in
10me that
had a
weed in it
1963 (1965)
Landscape with Figures
When I go back of my head
down the cervical well, roots
branch
thinning, figuring
5into flesh
and flesh
glimmers with man-old fires
and ghosts
hollowing up into mind
10cry from ancient narrowing
needle-like caves:
a depth of contact there you’d
think would hold, the last
nerve-hair
15feeding direct from
meat’s indivisible stuff:
but what we ride on makes us ride
and rootless mind
in a thundering rove
20establishes, disposes:
rocks and clouds
take their places:
or if place shifts by a sudden breaking
in of stars
25and mind whirls
where to go
then like a rabbit it
freezes in grass, order
as rock or star, to let whatever can, come,
30pass, pass over: somewhere another human
figure moves or rests, concern
for (or fear of) whom
will start and keep us.
1963 (1965)
The Constant
When leaving the primrose, bayberry dunes, seaward
I discovered the universe this morning,
I was in no
mood
5for wonder,
the naked mass of so much miracle
already beyond the vision
of my grasp:
along a rise of beach, a hundred feet from the surf,
10a row of clam shells
four to ten feet wide
lay sinuous as far as sight:
in one shell—though in the abundance
there were others like it—upturned,
15four or five inches across the wing,
a lake
three to four inches long and two inches wide,
all dimensions rounded,
indescribable in curve:
20and on the lake a turning galaxy, a film of sand,
coordinated, nearly circular (no real perfections),
an inch in diameter, turning:
turning:
counterclockwise, the wind hardly perceptible from 11 o’clock
25with noon at sea:
the galaxy rotating,
but also,
at a distance from the shell lip,
revolving
30round and round the shell:
a gull’s toe could spill the universe:
two more hours of sun could dry it up:
a higher wind could rock it out:
the tide will rise, engulf it, wash it loose:
35utterly:
the terns, their
young somewhere hidden in clumps of grass or weed,
were diving sshik sshik at me
then pealing upward for another round and dive:
40I have had too much of this inexhaustible miracle:
miracle, this massive, drab constant of experience.
1962 (1964)
Contingency
Water from the sprinkler
collects
in street-edge gravel and
makes rocky pools: birds
5materialize—puff, bathe
and drink: a green-black
grackle lopes, listing,
across the hot street, pecks
a starling, and drinks: a
10robin rears misty with
exultation: twittering comes
in bunches of starts and
flights: shadows pour
across cement and lawn: a
15turn of the faucet
dries every motion up.
1963 (1965)
One:Many
To maintain balance
between one and many by
keeping in operation both one and many:
fear a too great consistency, an arbitrary
5imposition
from the abstract one
downwardly into the realities of manyness:
this makes unity
not deriving from the balance of manyness
10but by destruction of diversity:
it is unity
unavailable to change,
cut off from the reordering possibilities of
variety:
15when I tried to summarize
a moment’s events
along the creek shore this afternoon,
the tide gathering momentum outwardly,
terns
20hovering
dropping to spear shallow water,
the minnows
in a band
wavering between deep and shallow water,
25the sand hissing
into new images,
the grass at its sound and symmetry,
scoring
semicircles of wind
30into sand,
the tan beetle in a footprint dead,
flickering to
gusts of wind,
the bloodsucking flies
35at their song and savage whirl,
when I tried to think by what
millions of grains of events
the tidal creek had altered course,
when I considered alone
40a record
of the waves on the running blue creek,
I was released into a power beyond my easy failures,
released to think
how so much freedom
45can keep the broad look of serenity
and nearly statable balance:
not unity by the winnowing out of difference,
not unity thin and substanceless as abstraction,
uneventful as theory:
50I think of California’s towns and ranges,
deserts and oil fields,
highways, forests, white boulders,
valleys, shorelines,
headlands of rock;
55and of Maine’s
unpainted seahouses
way out on the tips of fingerlands,
lobster traps and pots,
freshwater lakes; of Chicago,
60hung like an eggsac on the leaf of Lake
Michigan, with
its
Art Museum, Prudential Building, Knickerbocker Hotel
(where Cummings stayed);
65of North Carolina’s
Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, outer banks, shoals,
telephone wire loads of swallows,
of Columbus County
where fresh-dug peanuts
70are boiled
in iron pots, salt filtering
in through boiled-clean shells (a delicacy
true
as artichokes or Jersey
75asparagus): and on and on through the villages,
along dirt roads, ditchbanks, by gravel pits and on
to the homes, to the citizens and their histories,
inventions, longings:
I think how enriching, though unassimilable as a whole
80into art, are the differences: the small-business
man in
Kansas City declares an extra dividend
and his daughter
who teaches school in Duquesne
85buys a Volkswagen, a second car for the family:
out of many, one:
from variety an over-riding unity, the expression of