The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1

by A. R. Ammons

20or overthrust into very recent times:

  there waterlike stone, those heated seekings &

  goings, cools to exact concentration, I

  mean the telling’s unmediated:

  the present allows the reading of much

  25old material: but none of it need be read:

  it says itself (and

  said itself) so to speak perfectly in itself.

  1969 (1970)

  The Unifying Principle

  Ramshackles, archipelagoes, loose constellations

  are less fierce, subsidiary centers, with the

  attenuations of interstices, roughing the salience,

  jarring the outbreak of too insistent commonalty:

  5a board, for example, not surrendering the rectitude

  of its corners, the island of the oaks an

  admonishment to pines, underfigurings (as of the Bear)

  that take identity on: this motion is against

  the grinding oneness of seas, hallows distinction

  10into the specific: but less lovely, too, for how

  is the mass to be amassed, by what sanction

  neighbor touch neighbor, island bear resemblance,

  how are distinction’s hard lines to be dissolved

  (and preserved): what may all the people turn to,

  15the old letters, the shaped, characteristic peak

  generations of minds have deflected and kept:

  a particular tread that sometimes unweaves, taking

  more shape on, into dance: much must be

  tolerated as out of timbre, out of step, as being not

  20in its time or mood (the hiatus of the unconcerned)

  and much room provided for the wretched to find caves

  to ponder way off in: what then can lift the people

  and only when they choose to rise or what can make

  them want to rise, though business prevents: the

  25unifying principle will be a

  phrase shared, an old cedar long known, general

  wind-shapes in a usual sand: those objects single,

  single enough to be uninterfering, multiple by

  the piling on of shared sight, touch, saying:

  30when it’s found the people live the small wraths of ease.

  1969 (1970)

  Runoff

  By the highway the stream downslope

  could hardly clear itself

  through rubbish and slime but by

  that resistance gained a cutting

  5depth equal to its breadth

  and so had means to muscle into

  ripples and spill over angled

  shelves:

  and so went on down in a long

  10curve, responsively slow to the

  sizable ridge it

  tended

  and farther on down, quiet and clear,

  never tipping enough to break sound,

  15slowed into marshy landrise and burst

  into a bog of lupine and mirrored:

  that was a place! what a place!

  the soggy small marsh, nutgrass and swordweed!

  1969 (1970)

  Transaction

  I attended the burial of all my rosy feelings:

  I performed the rites, simple and decisive:

  the long box took the spilling of gray ground in

  with little evidence of note: I traded slow

  5work for the usual grief: the services were private:

  there was little cause for show, though no cause not

  to show: it went indifferently, with an appropriate

  gravity and lack of noise: the ceremonies of the self

  seem always to occur at a distance from the ruins of men

  10where there is nothing really much to expect, no arms,

  no embraces: the day was all right: certain occasions

  outweigh the weather: the woods just to the left

  were average woods: well, I turned around finally from

  the process, the surface smoothed into a kind of seal,

  15and tried to notice what might be thought to remain:

  everything was there, the sun, the breeze, the woods

  (as I said), the little mound of troublesome tufts of

  grass: but the trees were upright shadows, the breeze

  was as against a shade, the woods stirred gray

  20as deep water: I looked around for what was left,

  the tools, and took them up and went away, leaving

  all my treasures where they might never again disturb

  me, increase or craze: decision quietens:

  shadows are bodiless shapes, yet they have a song.

  1969 (1970)

  Then One

  When the circumstance takes

  on a salience, as a

  crushing pressure, then one,

  addled by the possible closures,

  5the tangles that might

  snap taut in a loop

  or other unfigurable construct,

  then one

  pores on drift-logs far at sea

  10where room can wear drifts out

  winds change

  and few places show one can’t

  embark

  from and then one thinks finally

  15with tight appreciation

  of nothingness

  or if not that far of

  things that loosen or come apart.

  1969 (1970)

  Further On

  Up this high and far north

  it’s shale and woodsless snow:

  small willows and alder brush

  mark out melt streams on the

  5opposite slope and the wind talks

  as much as it can before freeze

  takes the gleeful, glimmering

  tongues away: whips and sticks

  will scream and screech then

  10all winter over the deaf heights,

  the wind lifting its saying out

  to the essential yell of the

  lost and gone: it’s summer now:

  elk graze the high meadows:

  15marshgrass heads high as a moose’s

  ears: lichen, a wintery weed,

  fills out for the brittle sleep:

  waterbirds plunder the shallows.

  1969 (1970)

  Hope’s Okay

  The undergrowth’s a conveyance of butterflies

  (flusters of clustering) so buoyant and delightful,

  filling into a floating impression, diversity’s

  diversion breaking out into under-piny seas

  5point by point to the mind’s nodes and needs:

  let’s see, though, said the fire through the undergrowth,

  what all this makes into, what difference can

  survive it: so I waded through the puffy disgust

  and could not help feeling despair of

  10many a gray, smoke-worming twig, scaly as if alive:

  much that was here I said is lost and if I stoop

  to ask bright thoughts of roots

  do not think I ask for better than was here

  or that hope with me rises one leaf higher than

  15the former growth (higher to an ashless fire) or

  that despair came any closer than ash to being total.

  1969 (1969)

  Life in the Boondocks

  Untouched grandeur in the hinterlands:

  large-lobed ladies laughing in brook

  water, a clear, scrubbed ruddiness lofted

  to cones and conifers: frost blurs

  5the morning elk there and squirrels

  chitter with the dawn, numb seed: clarity,

  the eagle dips into scary nothingness,

  off a bluff over canyon heights: trout

  plunder their way up, thrashing the shallows

  10white: ladies come out in the gold-true sun

  and loll easy as white boulders

  in the immediate radiance by wind-chilling


  streams: I have been there so

  often, so often and held the women, squeezed,

  15tickled, nuzzled their rose-paint luxury:

  so many afternoons listened to the rocky

  drone of bees over spring-water weed-bloom,

  snow-water violets, and distant moss turf.

  1969 (1970)

  Spiel

  I feel sure you will be pleased

  with our product: it is

  a coil spring comes wintrily into

  as house plants

  5react first to the longer light:

  but begin all

  enterprise with celebration: measures

  on the sand by

  fluttering rush, sail, heart spun in

  10a resonance between

  departure, grief and adventure of

  change, the hurry and detail,

  sudden calamity

  of shoving off, moorless into a hunk of

  15time that may

  round back to greet its other edge:

  may:

  (nothing is so phony as an incomplete

  obscurity—it needs spelling

  20into its deepest outing,

  surrounding into its biggest bulging:

  when it gets aglitter

  it grows black: what to make of a

  hinted thing

  25where the mind’s not traveled

  but a botch: but spelled out any

  spiel can pick enough surfage up

  to drum a sea loose)

  I just ate a green banana: it is in

  30me now mushed and gushy: there is

  nothing small enough to conjure clarity with:

  take the bathroom spider wintered thin:

  so thin

  bleached out against walls

  35life seems in him a brown taint that

  lacking might make him water or crisp:

  he spun an open-ended house

  (safety, closed up to perfection,

  traps, he knows)

  40in the ceilingwall sharp

  angle:

  (well then I will take a mere

  suasion!

  a drift

  45as of earth into light, the chorus

  dancing to the right,

  left, a multimedial parlance:

  well I will take just the angle

  the waves come out of the sea, say,

  50the way they break down their length

  in a continuous moving roar:

  I don’t care how many drops of

  water there are

  or how totally they are water or how

  55the ocean is nothing (figuratively

  speaking) else: I identify waves,

  they have an

  action, many actions: I’ve seen them

  come straight in, crest first in

  60the middle, break outward both ways

  and leave behind

  a pyramid of foam: I’ve never

  seen a drop of water do that:)

  at night he rides down to the white

  65sink

  and hums in a drop of water’s

  uptight edge: I try to think

  of what he eats

  so winter skinny, such a bugless

  70winter: maybe those tiny book lice

  leave learning

  scoot ceilings sometimes and suffer

  the usual

  confrontation with reality:

  75or I think dandruff scales soaked in

  droplets

  drift dripping proteins loose that

  drunk skirl spiders into hallelujahs

  of darkening:

  80from the state of distress a pill can

  remove you: meanwhile the blue

  spruce

  is perilously unaffected:

  it’s monsterless here:

  85the

  bayberry in a green sweep, breeze

  lively:

  indifferent as lace:

  swipes, swatches, smears, luminous

  90samplers: what is

  the existence in the argument of what

  the argument

  is about: precise but unspecified,

  hunted out, turned from, disguised,

  95brunted:

  order, strict,

  is the shadow of flight:

  I mean because of the lusterless

  structure

  100the wing has rein: fact

  is the port of

  extreme navigation:

  where footprints

  disappear at the edge of melting snow

  105hesitation breaks mindfully into itself:

  the fairgrounds

  (hill meadows, aslant

  triangular sweepclosings of heights,

  scrub fringes, yangs of woods,

  110lovely sumac and sassafras, golden

  clumps of grass

  rising to a wind line, commas,

  the pheasant’s tail, long,

  perfect for disappearance in

  115winter weeds, clumpy printwork

  of rabbits

  over hedge-kept floats of snow . . .

  I don’t know what all there is

  but there’s more than plenty and

  120that’s just it there’s too much

  except for, there’d be too much

  except for the outgrowth of soothing

  hills)

  sporting goods

  125nip and tuck

  scoops

  scopes

  scrimps &

  scroungings

  (1970)

  Guitar Recitativos

  1

  I know you love me, baby

  I know it by the way you carry on around here certain times of the day & night

  I can make the distinction between the willing and the unrefusable

  That’s not what I’m talking about

  5That’s not what I need

  What I mean is could you just peel me a few of those grapes over there

  I want to lie here cool and accumulate . . .

  Oh about half a bunch

  That’s what I need

  10—flick out those little seed—

  Just drop’em in here one at a time

  I’m not going anyplace, baby, not today

  Relax—sneak the skin off a few of those grapes for me, will you?

  2

  Baby, you been stomping round on my toes so long

  15They breaking out in black and blue hyacinths,

  Well-knit forget-me-nots

  Geraniums are flopping out over the tops of my shoes

  tendril leaves coming out along the edges of my shoelaces

  Gladioli are steering out of the small of my back

  20strumming their cool stalks up my spine

  Zinnias radiating from the crock of my neck

  and petunias swinging down bells from my earlobes

  All this stomping around on me you been doing, baby,

  I’m gonna break out in a colorful reaction

  25I’m gonna wade right through you

  with the thorns of all these big red roses

  3

  I can tell you what I think of your beauty, baby,

  You have it, it’s keen and fast, there’s this

  glittery sword whipping about your head all day

  30and, baby, you make people snap—you condescend

  and a surprised little heart splatters or you turn your

  cold head away and a tiny freeze kills a few

  cells in some man’s brain—I mean, baby, you

  may be kind but your beauty sweetie is such

  35many a man would run himself through for

  hating your guts every minute that he died for you

  4

  I’m tired of the you-and-me thing

  I am for more research into the nature of the amorous bond

  the discovery of catalysts for speeding-up, wearing out, and getting it over

&
nbsp; with

  40or for slowing it down to allow long intervals of looseness

  Baby, there are times when the mixture becomes immiscible

  and other times we get so stirred up I can’t tell

  whether I’m you or me

  and then I have this fear of a surprising reaction in which

  45we both turn into something else

  powdery or gaseous or slightly metallic

  What I mean is this whole relationship is, lacking further

  knowledge, risky: while there’s still time, why

  don’t you get yourself together and I’ll

  50get myself together and then we’ll sort of shy out

  of each other’s gravitational field, unstring the

  electromagnetism and then sort of just drop this

  whole orientation baby

  5

  You come in and I turn on:

  55freon purrs and the

  refrigerator breaks out with hives of ice

  The Westinghouse portable electric fan flushes

  my papers all over the room

  The waffle-iron whacks down sizzling imaginary waffles