by A. R. Ammons
variety:
no book of laws, short of unattainable reality itself,
90can anticipate every event,
control every event: only the book of laws founded
against itself,
founded on freedom of each event to occur as itself,
lasts into the inevitable balances events will take.
1962 (1965)
Halfway
This October
rain
comes after fall
summer and
5drought
and is
a still rain:
it takes leaves
straight
10down: the
birches stand
in
pools of them-
selves, the yellow
15fallen
leaves reflecting
those on
the tree, that
mirror the ground.
1963 (1965)
Interference
A whirlwind in the fields
lifts sand
into its motions
to show, tight, small,
5the way it walks
through a summer day:
better take time to watch
the sand-shadow mist—
since every
10grain of sand
is being counted by the sun.
1964 (1965)
Saliences
Consistencies rise
and ride
the mind down
hard routes
5walled
with no outlet and so
to open a variable geography,
proliferate
possibility, here
10is this dune fest
releasing
mind feeding out,
gathering clusters,
fields of order in disorder,
15where choice
can make beginnings,
turns,
reversals,
where straight line
20and air-hard thought
can meet
unarranged disorder,
dissolve
before the one event that
25creates present time
in the multi-variable
scope:
a variable of wind
among the dunes,
30making variables
of position and direction and sound
of every reed leaf
and bloom,
running streams of sand,
35winding, rising, at a depression
falling out into deltas,
weathering shells with blast,
striking hiss into clumps of grass,
against bayberry leaves,
40lifting
the spider from footing to footing
hard across the dry even crust
toward the surf:
wind, a variable, soft wind, hard
45steady wind, wind
shaped and kept in the
bent of trees,
the prevailing dipping seaward
of reeds,
50the kept and erased sandcrab trails:
wind, the variable to the gull’s flight,
how and where he drops the clam
and the way he heads in, running to loft:
wind, from the sea, high surf
55and cool weather;
from the land, a lessened breakage
and the land’s heat:
wind alone as a variable,
as a factor in millions of events,
60leaves no two moments
on the dunes the same:
keep
free to these events,
bend to these
65changing weathers:
multiple as sand, events of sense
alter old dunes
of mind,
release new channels of flow,
70free materials
to new forms:
wind alone as a variable
takes this neck of dunes
out of calculation’s reach:
75come out of the hard
routes and ruts,
pour over the walls
of previous assessments: turn to
the open,
80the unexpected, to new saliences of feature.
The reassurance is
that through change
continuities sinuously work,
85cause and effect
without alarm,
gradual shadings out or in,
motions that full
with time
90do not surprise, no
abrupt leap or burst: possibility,
with meaningful development
of circumstance:
when I went back to the dunes today,
95saliences,
congruent to memory,
spread firmingly across my sight:
the narrow white path
rose and dropped over
100grassy rises toward the sea:
sheets of reeds,
tasseling now near fall,
filled the hollows
with shapes of ponds or lakes:
105bayberry, darker, made wandering
chains of clumps, sometimes pouring
into heads, like stopped water:
much seemed
constant, to be looked
110forward to, expected:
from the top of a dune rise,
look of ocean salience: in
the hollow,
where a runlet
115makes in
at full tide and fills a bowl,
extravagance of pink periwinkle
along the grassy edge,
and a blue, bunchy weed, deep blue,
120deep into the mind the dark blue
constant:
minnows left high in the tide-deserted pocket,
fiddler crabs
bringing up gray pellets of drying sand,
125disappearing from air’s faster events
at any close approach:
certain things and habits
recognizable as
having lasted through the night:
130though what change in
a day’s doing!
desertions of swallows
that yesterday
ravaged air, bush, reed, attention
135in gatherings wide as this neck of dunes:
now, not a sound
or shadow, no trace of memory, no remnant
explanation:
summations of permanence!
140where not a single single thing endures,
the overall reassures,
deaths and flights,
shifts and sudden assaults claiming
limited orders,
145the separate particles:
earth brings to grief
much in an hour that sang, leaped, swirled,
yet keeps a round
quiet turning,
150beyond loss or gain,
beyond concern for the separate reach.
1962 (1966)
Trap
White, flipping
butterfly,
paperweight,
flutters by and
5over shrubs,
meets a binary
mate and they
spin, two orbits
of an
10invisible center;
rise
over the roof
and caught on
currents
15rise higher
than trees and
higher and up
out of sight,
swifter in
20ascent than they
can fly or fall.
1963 (1965)
The Foot-Washing
Now you have come,
the roads
humbling your feet with dust:
I ask you to
5sit by this
s
pring:
I will wash your feet
with springwater
and silver care:
10I lift leaking handbowls
to your ankles:
O ablutions!
Who are you
sir
15who are my brother?
I dry your feet
with sweetgum
and mint leaves:
the odor of your feet
20is newly earthen,
honeysuckled:
bloodwork in blue
raisures over the white
skinny anklebone:
25if I have wronged you
cleanse me with the falling
water of forgiveness.
And woman, your flat feet
yellow, gray with dust,
30your orphaned udders flat,
lift your dress
up to your knees
and I will wash your feet:
feel the serenity
35cool as cool springwater
and hard to find:
if I have failed to know
the grief in your gone time,
forgive me wakened now.
1959 (1965)
Recovery
All afternoon
the tree shadows, accelerating,
lengthened
till
5sunset
shot them black into infinity:
next morning
darkness
returned from the other
10infinity and the
shadows caught ground
and through the morning, slowing,
hardened into noon.
1964 (1964)
Two Motions
I.
It is not enough to be willing to come out of the dark
and stand in the light,
all hidden things brought into sight, the damp
black spaces,
5where fear, arms over its head, trembles into blindness,
invaded by truth-seeking light:
it is not enough to desire radiance, to be struck by
radiance: external light
throws darkness behind its brilliance, the division
10nearly half and half:
it is only enough when the inner light
kindles to a source, radiates from its sphere to all
points outwardly: then, though
surrounding things are half and half with
15light and darkness, all that is visible from the source
is light:
it is not enough to wish to cast light: as much
darkness as light is made that way: it is only
enough to touch the inner light of each surrounding thing
20and hope it will itself be stirred to radiance,
eliminating the shadows that all lights give it,
and realizing its own full sphere:
it is only enough to radiate the sufficient light
within, the
25constant source, the light beyond all possibility of night.
II.
However;
in separating light from darkness
have we cast into death:
in attaining the luminous,
30made, capable self,
have we
brought error
to perfection:
in naming have we divided what
35unnaming will not undivide:
in coming so far,
synthesizing, enlarging, incorporating, completing
(all the way to a finished Fragment)
have we foundered into arrival:
40in tarring, calking, timbering,
have we kept our ship afloat
only to satisfy all destinations
by no departures;
only to abandon helm,
45sailcloth, hemp, spar;
only to turn charts
to weather, compass to salt, sextant
to sea:
as far as words will let us go, we have
50voyaged: now
we disperse the ruin of our gains
to do a different kind of going
that will
become less and
55less
voyaging
as arrival approaches nowhere-everywhere
in gain of nothing-everything.
1962 (1964)
Composing
An orchestration of events,
memories,
intellections, of the wounds,
hard throats, the perils
5of the youthful private member:
a clustering of years into phrases,
motifs, a
keying to somber D-flat
or brilliant A:
10an emergence
of minor meanings,
the rising of flutes, oboes, bassoons:
percussion,
the critical cymbal
15crashing grief out
or like a quivering fan unfolding
into spirit:
the derelict breakage of days, weeks,
hours, re-organizing,
20orienting
to the riding movement,
hawklike,
but keener in wings,
in shadow deeper:
25a swerving into the underside
gathering
dream-images,
the hidden coursing of red-black cries,
darkness,
30the ghosts re-rising,
the eyeless, crippled, furious,
mangled ones:
then two motions like cliffs
opposing, the orchestration at
35first
too torn, but going back
finding new lights to doom
the dark resurrections
until the large curve of meaning
40stands apart
like a moon-cusp or horn
singing with a higher soundless sound.
1958 (1965)
Ithaca, N.Y.
When the storm passed,
we listened to rain-leavings,
individual drops in
fields of surprise;
5a drop here
in a puddle;
the clear-cracking
drop
against a naked root;
10by the window,
the muffled, elm-leaf drop,
reorganizing at the tip,
dropping in another
event to the ground:
15we listened and
liveliness broke
out at a thousand quiet
points.
1963 (1965)
Consignee
I have been brought out of day,
out of the full dawn led away;
from the platform of noon
I have descended.
5To death, the diffuse one
going beside me, I said,
You have brought me out of day
and he said
No longer like the fields of earth
10may you go in and out.
I quarreled and devised a while
but went on
having sensed a nice dominion in the air,
the black so round and deep.
1951 (1965)
February Beach
Underneath, the dunes
are solid,
frozen with rain
the sand
5held and let
go deep
without losing
till a clearing freeze
left water the keeper of sand:
10warm days since
have intervened,
softened
the surface,
evaporated
15the thaw
and let grains loose: now
the white grains drift against the dunes
and ripple as if in summer,
hiding the hard deep marriage
20of sand and ice:
fog lay thick here
most of the morning
but now lifting, rides
in low from the sea,
25filters inland through the dunes
but
over the warm and
sunny sand rising
loses its shape out of sight:
30the dense clumps of grass, bent
over,
still wet with fog,
drop
dark buttons of held fog on thin dry sand,
35separately, here, there, large drops,
another rainsand shape:
distant, the ocean’s breakers
merge into high splintering
sound,
40the wind low, even, inland, wet,
a perfect carriage
for resolved, continuous striving:
not the deep breakage and roar
of collapsing hollows:
45sound that creation may not be complete,
that the land may not have been
given
permanently,
that something remains
50to be agreed on,
a lofty burn of sound, a clamoring and
coming on:
how will the mix be
of mound and breaker,
55grain and droplet: how
long can the freeze hold, the wind lie,
the free sand
keep the deep secret: turn: the gold
grass will come
60green in time, the dark stalks of rushes
will settle
in the hollows, the ice bridge
dissolving, yielding
will leave solid
65bottom for summer fording: the black bushes
will leaf,
hinder
the sea-bringing wind: turn turn