by A. R. Ammons
glints and glimmerings:
can motion alone then
hold you, strange person:
entertainments of flame and water,
105flame in water,
an honorable, ancient flame
removed in high burning: water
no less a metal of interest, subtly
obeying: sit down and be consoled:
110the death that reaches toward you has
been spared none:
be enchanted with the shrill hunger
of distant children:
do something:
115the boughs ripen:
birds falling out
around here like plums,
rolling around, tilting over, turbulent
somersaults, a wrestling with divinity,
120smooth & mostly belly:
the tail’s a mean instrument but
feathered
gives poise, as of
contrary knowledges:
125the cats frizzling with interest tone
down to pure motion: songs go
such way:
destruction of the world into the
guts: regeneration:
130the kill is a restless
matter: but
afterwards the fact’s
cool as satiation:
we just had lunch at the picnic table
135under the elm: chunks of cantaloupe,
peach slices, blueberries, all cool
colorings in a glass cup: hotdogs &
pepsi:
brilliant replenishment:
140icy destructions with the berry
burst, the teeth in a freshet
of cantaloupe juice:
the robin’s nest, way out on a pear
limb, nearly
145overhangs the table: some
worry, of course, a chirp or two:
distant approaches: above, the yellow
triangles of mouths:
up the stairs you go
150up the stairs you go
beddybye &
snoozy snooze
up the stairs you go
ho ho
155up the stairs you go
now the lawnmowers of reality are
whirring on the slopes of absent lawns
and sunday is in the world or part
of it: I look across the valley
160to the otherside big hills and realize
the whole thing’s rolling
tumbling in the smoothest quietest
lunge, our
bristlegreen rockship, our clamorous
165house wherein difference bites so
hard hardly
a man will admit the common nickelodean core
where metals twist in
slow drifts of warping
170pressure:
nevertheless into raw
space we turn, sun
feeding cosmic drift through,
expelling radiance of cosmic storm,
175and we are at an
incredible height going round
something:
in the whole coming and going of man
we may not
180get around once:
at certain levels recurrence is not
a bore: we clip an arc:
buttered batter’s better bitter:
what do you know:
185Western Prong beat Old Dock:
stir up them little wasps and you
have a nest of hornets:
past 21
women suffer
190unbearably (!)
take bladder irritation: that headachy
backachy feeling:
that burning stitching itching gives them
the weewees, makes them need
195fast relaxing comfort: what women go
through
to make or lose a buck: in those
ample haunches
greased with sheer illumination’s light
200is a mess of bacterial bloomers: it’s
merciful to lust the eye’s
small-blind: cultures from average nipples:
knowledge is lovely
but some of it shivers
205into the blood stream
and undermines the
requirements of the moment: but
desire spills antiseptic gold celluloid
sheathes o’erall
210and pours pellucid lubricants
down the drains of microfloral
habitations:
the clitoris rises above
surmountings, backs off, and
215takes a testy peck or so:
we went to the park & John swung on
the swings and swung:
little children, I told my wife,
these little children, some of them
220will live to say two thousand forty
maybe forty-five, fifty:
I said think of it by that time
we, you and I, will have been dead
so long
225worms yet will scoff at us:
it makes you think
(twice):
what are
a few vaginal weeds in the teeth
230compared with the traipsing gluebellies of
candorous maggots: & other worms,
all their noise:
get down, yes:
enwarm to eradication the carnal
235longings: which are short:
what, then, is the organization of the
soul: scrambles to the peak,
squirts off, slumps back: the
long & short of it:
240ducks were there, spinning, sputtering
in the glass: popcorn, wiener rolls
floating in the circumstance: but do
they do do underwater:
if a scientist, I’d devise
245a test
and count the dropping abstractions off:
a glass tank with top
and a careful observer
could keep that duck in there
250till he had to: yes, but the
test’s wrong: suppose the observed’s
disturbed & would much have
preferred
to go out upon the ground & hunker up on
255a hunk of grass:
could turn to billets due
formerly:
following a duck around au naturel
though
260could wobble a man’s weltanschauung:
scientific objectivity puts
radiance on
duckshit even: we used to save
coop chickenshit for choicest
265garden plants:
a powerful ingredient that
through the delicacies of floral
transfiguration
makes tasty gravy:
270friend of mine, brilliant
linguist, told me
a Southern Gentleman screwed
himself in the
penis
275with a squirrel’s
pizzle:
puzzling:
got it hung in there’s how everybody
found out:
280doctor had to cut it loose:
let approved channels then be your
contemplation
so you will not wind up in a fix
or fuxy fox, feel the fire asphaltic:
285do
not go in for strange devices:
pins, strangulations or such:
practices that lead gradually away
from picnic tables,
290the trivial fluvial fumes of sunday braziers:
I’m not going to
delay my emergence:
I’m going to plop
a polyp:
295I’m going to pupate
pussycoon:
I’m going to shoot for the wings:
I can’t tell you how many times with
stalled i
nterior I’ve
300watched the spiders hatch & thrive:
I’m going to
get something off my chest—
incubus or poking heartflipper:
I’m 42:
305the rank & file has
o’errucked me & cloddled on:
I’m not going
any longer officially
to delay my emergence:
310I want the head of the matter to
move out of skinny closure:
I want a pumping, palpable turgidity:
I want the condition to take on flare:
I want manifestation silk-dry:
315I told this fellow:
I met him out under a soaking
elm tree:
I said you’re needy:
you’re so needy something’s rotten:
320I told him just because you have a
mailbox doesn’t mean anybody has
to put anything in it:
it’s your epidermal hole, nobody else’s:
I was getting so much pleasure out
325of soaking under the elm tree I
couldn’t get interested in the guy’s nasty cavity
and knew without looking I wasn’t
going to put anything in there:
too bad about the elms being in dutch:
330Archie:
Summer Session has agreed (somewhat
reluctantly) to split 303 into 2
sections, with one for Baxter. I
haven’t been able to reconfirm with Bax
335that he does still want a second course
but I’ve gone ahead as if he did, with
the understanding that someone will
teach the plus-23 students and do so
at the same time (8:00) as you.
340Barry
seeing in a green yard a sailboat for sale:
worth a morning:
when you consider life
adds up
345to exactly nothing:
one day I’m
going to go
out & conjure
the clouds down:
350I’m going to try the cape on:
if they don’t
come right down
flubbing their responsive damp bellies over the
ambience
355I’m going to strip and shit:
as a writing teacher I tell them
revise the world:
they clip, trim, slice:
they bring it in:
360oh no I say you’ve just put it on
stilts:
they lob, twist, crack:
oh no I say when they bring it in
you’ve killed it:
365reconceive:
they bring in something new:
what’s the use, I throw up my hands,
we’re already two or three worlds
behind:
370down this drain, endless
ingestion, getting
bloated with world: anybody toss
an old memo in: it’s squirting
milk into treeping squabs:
375burning’s going on down
there:
the whole world’s a few flakes:
it’s sedimentation through seas:
those in the heights need
380substantial bottoms: need the
sense
things are leveling off: hate
wide, especially open, disparities:
equilibrium fills holes with hills:
385feed in a grocery list, somebody:
feed in how to fix a
telescope on, say, a comet: feed in a
few large pieces of legislation,
couple committee reports, some lab
390notes, triptickets, sailing schedules,
the dawns & dusks of planets,
contemplations of squirrels:
somewhere along the line the computer
is going to perpetrate a large announcement:
395then we’ll know why the
imagination’s
winding no scraps up into
windy transfigurations:
in our day
400comfort is sunrise at 5:25:
couple systems analysts: bushel of
female ticks, engorged: some dirty
rats:
cutworms:
405nightfeeders that dusk arouses:
cubic mile of infestation,
corruption, rust, pus, pus
caterpillars,
snot:
410tank of wound weepage:
boxcar of love salt,
fill, siftings, winnowings, dregs,
curds, chips,
aerosols of eagerness, dozen black
415widows:
a league of universal ivy stone:
choice:
much testament of need: 400
singing horses, a flask of
420wart-juice from the udders of the awry:
families with a lot of living to do:
should get turquoise, shaded coppertone,
or spanish avocado:
features for fun-loving families:
425discover for yourselves where
the problems are & amass
alternative strategies:
otherwise it’s D− & no pussy:
Archie:
430Thanks very
much. That’s a
real pleasure.
Neil
I scribble, baby, I mean
435I breeze on:
every mile a twist, I
should be back:
a smidgen slit of silence lets all
in:
440the land’s turning tables
greased with the finest silence
money can buy, still, the wind, mine & its,
rattles over the ridges, splits
the cords of wood & gristle:
445to a cartographer
part of Pennsylvania’s a broken record:
curving grooves & ridges in
visual music:
day after day the camels of the rain
450bear their gray way by: the ditches
bend green grass in:
but then drought enlarges in rapids
the incidence of rocks:
but then flood, so salient, though
455with muscle swirls, could
scrape you across a single
prominence,
splitting possibility like a paper shell:
it is, even after an 8-day rain,
460hard to know what to ask for:
a baby robin’s been out on the
lawn all day, all day wet and for
many days wet though only one
day out: maybe if it were
465dry he could get to a low branch at
least, some force from those fumbling
wings, airier dry:
here are the 18-year-old
seedbeds & the
47019-year-old fertilizers:
they have come for a summer session:
knowledge is to be my insemination:
I grant it them as one grants flesh
the large white needle:
475what shall I tell those who are
nervous,
too tender for needles, the
splitting of iridescent tendons:
oh I tell them nothing can realize
480them, nothing ruin them
like the poundage of pure self:
with my trivia
I’ll dispense dignity, a sense of office,
formality they can define themselves against:
485the head is my sphere:
I’ll look significant as I deal with
mere wires of light, ghosts of
cells, working there.
1968 (1970)
BRIEFINGS: POEMS SMALL AND EASY (1971)
for John Logan
Center
A bir
d fills up the
streamside bush
with wasteful song,
capsizes waterfall,
5mill run, and
superhighway
to
song’s improvident
center
10lost in the green
bush green
answering bush:
wind varies:
the noon sun casts
15mesh refractions
on the stream’s amber
bottom
and nothing at all gets,
nothing gets
20caught at all.
1963 (1968)
Mechanics
A clover blossom’s a province:
actually: florets cluster helical
villages with visible streets:
down the main arteries a ways
5leaffarms produce common sustenance:
a kingbee when all is ready
visits and tries the yellow-doored
purplish houses for virgin
sweet, feeds in winged spells,
10rumples everything, and leaves behind
not as a gift or fee—seed, seed.
1967 (1969)
Up
A clown kite, my
self rustles
up
to any gust:
5warps & whucks
the wind: O
my blustering orange
and striped green
immensities!
10I get sometimes so
good
tickled at my
self I slip
flat down and
15windless
make no
show of grief.
1968
After Yesterday
After yesterday
afternoon’s blue
clouds and white rain
the mockingbird
5in the backyard
untied the drops from
leaves and twigs
with a long singing.
1968 (1969)
Event
A leaf fallen is
fallen
throughout the universe
and
5from the instant of
its fall, for
all time gone
and to come:
worlds jiggle in
10webs, drub
in leaf lakes,
squiggle in
drops of ditchwater:
size and place
15begin, end,